The Eternal Sunshine of a Detective's Mind
by Emma Lynch
Summary: Sherlock AU. In the future, a bad experience does not need to ruin your life. There are places, all around the world, where memories that scar can be extracted and stored in a secure facility and a damaged soul can start afresh. When Sherlock and John are called to The Anamnesis Institute to investigate a break in, Sherlock Holmes, aloof, cool, genius detective, unleashes a secret.
1. Chapter 1

**I.**

 **Bad Things**

Bad things happen.

All of the time.

Bad things happen all of the time.

This is an irrefutable and unfortunate part exchange we mortals parry with on a daily basis. We live, therefore we chance a series of unfortunate possibilities everytime we step into the world beyond the doorstep. (Truthfully, there are many bad things possible in the confines of one's own home, but that's another story for another time).

We are humans who must interact with potential tragedies each day: traffic jams, unexpected hailstorms, a rapidly escalating stomach upset, a visible panty line (and far, far worse),but it is also a universal truth that many (if not most) of the bad things do not emerge until we chance upon a catalyst it is almost impossible to avoid.

Another human.

Like moths to a destructive (and often disgracefully unreliable) flame, humanity will insist upon seeking out some form of inter-social assuagement during its day; the bus driver, the coffee vendor, the receptionist at their place of work, co-workers with no commonality but their employment, fitness instructors at their overpriced gyms, the tired and disgruntled checkout worker at the end of a long shift. The list seems endless even before the greatest hurdle of all is breached.

Loved ones.

A heart that is given is a heart that is corrupted.

To love another is to be vulnerable and to be vulnerable not only allows Bad Things to make their inexorable march upon your citadel, but also gives out directions, keys and welcome mats to ensure your fate.

Distraction, confusion, longing and (inevitably) loss, all bring heartache, devastation and an all-encompassing swathe of loneliness that cuts across the human soul, rendering it null, void and empty.

Thus, people cannot be trusted and are weakened by their own primitive desires. Like children, like vulnerable animals, they do not learn from the historical pursuits of the others who came before them; of the others who tried but could not avoid the dissatisfaction, the untruths, the betrayals and the heartache.

So, Bad Things happen, and lives are ruined.

But perhaps -

Just perhaps -

They don't need to stay that way.

 **~x~**

 **II.**

 **The Anamnesis Institute**

Just to the south of Hyde Park and a little West of Grosvenor Place, there lies a white, unpretentious stucco building which owes a little less to the 18th Century than its Belgravian neighbours and a little more than most realise to the happiness of those privileged enough to cross its cherrywood, porticoed doors. A small, brass plaque is its only inclination towards identity, for those that know of its design and purpose also know that anonymity is not merely a word, but also a currency here.

By invitation only, a guest (visitor is such an impolite term) is escorted through silent, beeswax infused, wood panelled corridors, where dust motes hang heavy in the pale shafts casting themselves through ancient sash windows. Busts of long dead benefactors stare out from marble pillars without candour, without judgement, for who are they to judge those who have discovered methods they could not?

Visitor's books are not welcome here, nor is unnecessary conversation. Staff are pleasant and discrete; efficient and calm.

 _Everyone has made mistakes._

 _Not everyone must bear their burden._

 _Do not feel shame for your decision._

 _Embrace the luxury of choice._

 _Welcome the privilege of ignorance._

Thus, defying all that is natural and expected in the world, The Anamnesis Institute will soothe your guilt and tremulous uncertainties and seep saline into your veins, attach electrodes to your head and extract, evulse and withdraw the Bad Things your heart no longer needs. You leave its panelled corridors and non judgemental benefactors as a smiling (yet helpful) staff member advises you against driving and operating heavy machinery for twenty-four hours, to stay hydrated and bids you good day. You canter down the smooth steps of the Institute, following the footsteps of many gone before you. How many, you might consider as you go about your day, how many might have stepped down so carefree and light of heart as I do now? For the effort of forgetting that which has ravaged your life can be so exhausting as to be untenable.

Sometimes in life you must forget, in order to go on living.

And for the right price, you can.

 **~x~**

 **III.**

 **The Detective**

She did not look at ease.

Everything about her (four tells about the face, three about the hands and knees) told him the surroundings of his sitting room were not only unfamiliar but also a mite uncomfortable. Alleged to have come from landed gentry (the Saxe-Osbournes of Wetherby? Unlikely), she had none of the assuredness and politely contained entitlement of the upper classes. Nails bitten to the quick, hair poorly conditioned (he'd always known well-bred girls to have the swingiest, shiniest hair...for the most part) and she'd tried with the shoes, but Louboutin heels had quite the distinctive arch as they met the sole.

Her eyes darted about his room, from elegant paired sashes to jack-knifed letters atop the mantle and the newt experiment in demijohns populating the kitchen. Then, of course, there was Billy...

"More sugar?"

She'd already had three lumps, but nodded vigorously. Definitely south of the river. Leaning over with the crystal bowl, he noted the tiny pearl of a tear swelling across her lashes and suppressed another sigh. Predictable as day following night, May blossom in Regent's Park and John Watson ordering Dim Sum every second Friday of the month.

"He never returned?"

She sniffed, nodding and stirring, a quiet dignity despite her lack of lineage.

"He took everything. My post office book, my laptop, my gold necklace …"

"Your heart?" John Watson, as deft with a sharpened phrase as he could be with a scalpel, offered a tissue to staunch the veritable Niagara his words evoked.

"John - "

Ignoring his flatmate, John patted her shaking shoulders, and kneeling before her in a kind of benediction, he offered:

"We'll do everything we can to find him, Lucy."

"We will find him," decreed Sherlock Holmes, blandly. "But do try not to hold out for a happy ending."

Sobbing.

The two men exchanged looks (Sherlock's said _Help me_ ).

"I don't want the stuff back! I just want … I just want … "

"You just want to forget him," supplied Sherlock Holmes from the safety of his armchair, feeling as removed from humanity as Lucy was from her errant lover, and being distinctly grateful for it.

 **~x~**

8pm. They'd had dinner (something with chicken?), he'd reduced the saline solution in the demijohns by 23%, rain had started pattering across the windows with intent, and Mrs Hudson had been wittering about the guttering for some time…

Sherlock looked up suddenly. Mrs Hudson was no longer at the door and John Watson was rather noisily reading the newspaper.

"I said they'd last another winter," announced Sherlock.

More rustling, no words.

Sherlock put down his pipette, taking in the set shoulders and awkward wrists of his flatmate. Something was amiss, but what? (he hated not instantly reading John; John was a virtual Ladybird book of body language)

He stood up.

"To Mrs Hudson. I said the guttering would last another winter. Where is she?"

Rustle; significant page turning. Sherlock walked around to the front of John's chair, standing before the ridiculous shield his friend was, for some reason, holding before him. At length, John lowered the paper. His furrowed expression told a story.

"Mrs Hudson left half an hour ago. I take it you didn't notice?" Definite sarcasm, with a mere soupcon of resentment.

"You're angry - with me?"

Dark navy eyes met his own and Sherlock immediately regretted the newts; how long had this simmering pottage of annoyance been brewing? All evening perhaps? He was really off his game. Luckily, John never dodged a direct question.

"You were a heartless sod this afternoon, with Lucy Saxe-Osborne."

"Unlikely that was her na- "

"No, Sherlock (paper cast down, John standing), you _were_. There was sympathy to be offered and you, as her consulting detective, should have offered some."

"I'm no lonely hearts column John. I merely listen to their story, offer a solution and then pocket my fee. It's what I do."

John Watson, limp emerging as it did under stress, striding to the fridge and wrenching it open to the chink of bottles, suddenly turned, beer in hand and face a strange mixture. Anger, certainly, but also … something else.

"Yeah, Sherlock (turning the cap, using his left hand, sign of tension and anxiety), but it shouldn't be. You could have offered her something more than a tactless summation and an invoice!"

"I certainly did not - "

John took a swig and Sherlock took a moment, retreating from his usual justification. He then took a breath.

"You feel I should have shown more - empathy?"

John shook his head. They had had this conversation before and Sherlock suddenly recognised _that look_.

"Be kinder, Sherlock. No-one wants you to offer tissues, but just - (putting down the bottle on the bench) - You are privileged, genius, assured, and right almost all of the time, but … just … _just_ have a heart sometimes too, yeah?"

It was pity.

 **~x~**

 **IV.**

 **Genius**

Heart notwithstanding, Sherlock Holmes was certainly top of his game in the City that summer. John barely had time to transcribe his notes to the laptop before another visit resulted in a trail to be followed and a conundrum to be resolved, leading to another ream of notes needing blogging and, in turn, critiqued by Sherlock.

"' _The Case of the Copper Gin Stills_ '?"

John swatted him away. Sherlock never missed an opportunity to purposely misinterpret his case titles. They were the literary flourishes he most enjoyed about the writing up process. Half the fashionable bars of Mayfair had been duped by the fake 'botanicals' swilling around an almost fatal mix of ethanol and sugar syrup and had been extremely grateful for the adroit conservation of their reputations. As per his habit, Sherlock had seemed disinterested once the chase was over, merely commenting that "mummy will be relieved".

"You certainly know your juniper berries." He lowered the laptop lid in an effort to shield his words, but Sherlock was already walking away.

"Alambique."

"Sorry?"

"The correct name for a copper distilling unit for gin. _Alambique_."

"That's not going to be a title to attract Joe Public."

"How very gratifying."

Then, later.

"' _The Adventure of the Navel Tattoo?'_ Oh, for goodness sake John!"

That time, a thrilling (yes, he admitted his addiction) descent into the grimy underbelly of smuggling via undercover aliases and intriguing disguises (Sherlock's gold tooth had been a particular surprise). A gang had been using young girls to transport diamonds camouflaged as body art. Sherlock had been suspiciously expert with a tattoo gun, leading John along some fascinating mental scenarios regarding his friend's past. He didn't quite believe the 'YouTube video' explanation but decided he'd bide his time.

By July, when Mr Jonas Oldacre had been arrested and over thirty grateful householders wanted to shake Sherlock's hand, John flat out refused to share the title of his latest _oeuvre._

"Show me."

"No."

"John, just let me see - "

"You'll mock."

"When have I ever - ?"

"Every. Single. Time."

Eventually, when he realised the futility of his petulance and gave in to what he felt sure would be inevitable scorn, John Watson was pleasantly surprised.

"" _The Case of The No-good Builder.'_ Excellent John. Direct, clear and devoid of attempts at the banal. I like it."

And there it was.

Sherlock Holmes; privileged, assured, genius and right almost all of the time was also (on occasion) _unpredictable._

And that was kind of OK.

 **~x~**

 **V.**

 **Forbidden**

A flurry of Saville Row, Brookes Brothers, rolled umbrella and Brylcreem erupted forth from the black front door with some considerable force, almost causing John to totter as he was reaching up to adjust the knocker (again). Used to a certain degree of reptilian charm and patronising tolerance, he was quite shocked to see the expression on Mycroft's face as he strode hurriedly into the waiting Daimler.

He was _furious._

As John gave a cheery wave to the retreating _swoosh_ of expensive tyres he bit down a certain shiver rippling through his chest. He had seen (and heard) excruciating exchanges between the Holmes brothers on many an occasion, but he had never before seen such dark ire in the drawn brows of the eldest, and certainly never lacked a greeting thereof either.

He looked into the open doorway and up the darkened stairwell, half expecting smoke to be drifting down from their quarters, but all was eerily quiet. Something had happened though, and it one hundred percent had something to do with Sherlock.

Affecting casual as he chucked his keys onto the table, John busied himself with the kettle and was quite pleased to note no duelling pistols smoking on the table nor pentangles drawn across the floor. In fact, Sherlock was lying across the sofa, dressed in pyjamas and alternating between flurried scrolling and lightning texting. His face was a focus of concentration and John could smell another Blog entry on the breeze as he filled the teapot.

"What's up with Mycroft? Have you hacked into his WeightWatchers account again?"

Still texting, brows drawn into a crease.

John poured slowly, biding his time. He had the whole evening since dates had been thin on the ground these recent weeks.

"Nicked his Action Man in 1982 and he's just found out?"

 _Click, click, click._

John sipped his tea, blowing first.

"You've refused a case haven't you?"

Sherlock stopped texting, looking up at his friend with a strange glitter to his pale eyes and a slight flush across his cheekbones. John smiled; this could easily be a nine, or even a ten.

"On the contrary John," he was getting up, pulling off clothing at the same time as walking towards his room.

"I've been _forbidden_ from taking one."

And John just had time to catch the merest twitch of a smile at the corner of his flatmate's mouth before the door was slammed shut and the sound of drawers being wrenched open could be heard, with a muffled addendum:

"Call a cab, five minutes. The Anamnesis Institute "

The game, it seemed, was most definitely _on_.

 _ **~x~**_


	2. Chapter 2

**VI.**

 **Deja vu**

So caught was he in the infantile fraternal jousting that passed for conversation with Mycroft these days, Sherlock's first glimpse of The Anamnesis Institute caught him off guard.

As John paid the cab he stood, momentarily rooted to the spot, lost in thought, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Been here before?"

"Never."

"Me neither. I expected something a bit more Grand Guignol; spooky, you know?" John looked upwards at the blank windows, sweeping steps and cherry wood front door. "Looks harmless enough though."

"What did you expect? Flashes of lightning above a belfry? Bats tumbling out of an upstairs window?" Sherlock stepped up slowly, taking in the small brass plate, the immaculate frontage, the utter anonymity. In truth, he could deduce very little, but some small tug of _knowing_ tugged at him, evoking something little to do with deduction.

But more like recollection.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd been watching _Scooby Doo's_ opening credits."

"There have been some issues with security here John, which interests me to a degree, since the Institute has better security than The Royal Mint and MI6 combined. What interests me much more is the intractable veto Mycroft slapped on my involvement earlier. It all gives a little purpose to an otherwise very predictable Saturday morning."

They stood waiting.

"What I want to know is, who asked you to take this case? Clearly not the British Government, and the owners of this place. They value discretion beyond anything else, so I've heard."

Sherlock's prickled nerves were soothed slightly at the memory.

"Anonymous note, pushed under the door." He smiled. "Takes me back to the good old days."

An abrupt growl of static halted any future musings, and further doorstep wranglings for admittance were avoided when Sherlock identified them both without needing to refer to the scandal his involvement might engender.

"Trust is at the heart of our service, Mr Holmes. We cannot allow its breach."

Edward Baynes sat, large, still and formally attired behind an inexplicably designed desk, which appeared to use a strange fulcrum balancing system John had seen in some top end medical furniture supplies catalogue at the surgery. The room was a dazzling white, punctuated by framed theatre poster lithographs (most likely originals), bowls of perfect pale lavender roses and a quotation by Nietzsche:

" _The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."_

It seemed Mr Baynes and the institute he represented were doing alright for themselves.

Simultaneously, Sherlock Holmes was arranging his thoughts like colour-coded post-it notes inside his head: _non-smoker, missed a dental appointment (regretting it), unmarried, childless, lives alone in a south-facing block of luxury flats (between fourth and seventh - no, sixth - floors) currently undiagnosed ketosis, possible diabetes, at least three stone overweight, loves operetta, particularly Gilbert and Sullivan._ There was more, but Sherlock felt the prickle of anxiety return and attempted to banish it with his reply.

"Agreed, which is why I am here. Anonymous tip-offs, whilst scurrilous and cowardly to the casual observer, should always be afforded a modicum of respect before they can be fully discounted. My discretion is assured, as is Doctor Watson's." Sherlock's eyes briefly flashed across the Persian rug in John's direction. "Be assured, most of my cases never reach publication; I do not need a shop window."

The dim roar of central London traffic could be heard from the slightly opened sash. The morning had promised rain, but a heavy stillness and solid heat had descended onto the city, making the air oppressive and muggy. At the word 'window', Mr Baynes nodded over, a slightly apologetic expression clouding his composed features.

"Our air conditioner is being repaired currently, and certain parts of the building are not as comfortable as we would like. Mr Holmes, I do take your concerns most seriously and truly appreciate your offer of assistance, but I assure you that our security systems are unlike our air conditioner in that they are working perfectly; no breach has been noted."

"Therefore concluding that none has occurred? An event without record remains an event, as I am sure my blogger will testify."

John smiled without sincerity and made mental note _not_ to inform Sherlock that Mrs Hudson's sister was due to visit the following week until it was too late for him to make alternative arrangements to be elsewhere.

"I see how your reputation of thoroughness precedes you, Mr Holmes. Would a tour of our facility help put your mind at rest? Our facility is, by law, inspected every six months by the _Board of Ethics_ and _The Freedom of Remembrance Trust_ ; we have nothing to hide."

Darkened and discreet reception areas gave way to gradually more clinical corridors and hospital style swing doors. Sherlock walked briskly, staying slightly ahead and causing an audible breathlessness to their slightly reddened and out of conditioned tour guide. After the fifth turn, John took his flatmate's arm.

"Hey, slow down a bit will you? Give the fella a chance. Anyone would think you knew where you were going."

Sherlock slowed, wordlessly nodding as he held the next door for Mr Baynes, and mind whirring, panic bubbling to the surface again. The thing was, _he did_. He knew every turn and doorway, every set of stairs and medical supplies cupboard.

The question was, how?

 **~x~**

 **VII.**

 **Hive mind**

"It's always better to be safe than sorry."

John Watson shook Edward Baynes' clammy hand (the humidity had not fallen and, back in his office, the lavender roses were wilting). Sherlock stood by the door, his earlier glee a distant memory, his expression blank.

"Indeed, indeed. I am most gratified for your help in this matter. I sincerely hope no word of this shall be shared beyond these walls."

"You have our word."

Both John and Mr Baynes turned expectantly to Sherlock, the former distinctly irritated to see his flatmate listless and disinterested. Mr Baynes discreetly took a handkerchief from his top pocket, wiping some of the humidity from his brow.

"Mr Holmes, I - "

"Your storage vaults. I need to see them." Sherlock had jerked into life in the manner of a clockwork toy everyone had forgotten about.

Amenable Mr Baynes was hot, bothered, incredibly thirsty and almost on his last nerve. Sherlock reached over to the carafe and poured him a glass of water.

"I do not have the authority to enter an individual client's vault. Their memories are accessible only by them, by DNA extraction and fingerprinting recognition. It is as individual as they are."

Sherlock only nodded as the man drank the water, plucking compassion and understanding from the air as though he was shopping at Tesco.

"Rest assured Mr Baynes, I only wish to see the room where the uploads are stored, not the uploads themselves. Could one of your security staff escort us? It would take a few minutes and I might suggest you rest and take refreshment. Oh, and maybe a blood test at the earliest possible opportunity?"

He affected a winning smile, but John wasn't fooled for even a moment.

Mr Baynes nodded, but not before an unusual look passed across his benign features.

"Very well, but know that the choice to do so is yours, Mr Holmes."

Sherlock blinked, but nodded in return.

Storage 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 were all inspected and duly found impregnable as they were silently escorted by Athelney Jones, a six foot eight monolith of a man without a single hair on his head. Storage 4.0 lay at the end of a long, stuffy, brightly-lit corridor, clearly subject to the A/C failure as several windows were making a poor attempt to ventilate the space as their footsteps echoed in the silence of the evening. No clients were admitted after five pm and only a handful of staff remained, many on their way home or to the delights a Saturday night in town could bring.

Every so often, Sherlock would stop, casting his gaze about and appearing to be listening.

"You're spooking Easter Island Man," hissed John, after the third time. Sherlock was, even for him, behaving oddly, and he had the distinct impression that, despite Mycroft's ire, they were both wasting their time. "What's going on?"

Sherlock put his finger to his mouth. "Listen. Can you hear a buzzing sound?"

"Lights? Traffic? Air Con? Zombie apocalypse? I know, I know… it's an ' _impeccably safe process'."_

With a swipe of a pass key, they entered the fourth large room in a series of large rooms, John still impressed by the hundreds (possibly thousands) of small wall mounted plaques, small keyboards and digital displays, truncated at intervals by huge ladders on rails. It still took all he had to consider their contents without losing his own mind.

People's actual thoughts; taken from their hippocampus where they had been laid down over the years of their lives as explicit memories - things that had actually happened to them - and the things they no longer wanted. Up, above their heads, rose a thousand sadnesses, a rejected collective of poor decisions, unkind actions, or just plain, bad luck; a library of events so catastrophic that people who had stored them would most likely never return to retrieve them. If it wasn't for the law, which decreed their extracted memories be stored for the entirety of their lifetimes, this room (and others like it) would simply not exist. Despite the urban myth of a criminal returning to the scene of their crime, how many would choose to replace a disastrous marriage, an unbearable bereavement, a moment of utter mortification which had previously risen up to haunt its owner with unendurable regularity? It took his breath away to contemplate it.

"John," Sherlock's voice was steady, a facsimile of calm. "John, keep very still. Do not move."

 _(a vest of explosives, strapped tight; the smell of chlorine; a scarlet beam of light across his chest)_

But Sherlock knew his thoughts as he had them.

"No, no, nothing like that. Let me - "

In the dim light, he stood taught and the monolith looked silently on as Sherlock Holmes removed a large blackish insect from his collar and held it across his pale long fingers.

"Good lord…" Sherlock's eyes were as lit up now as they had been deadened previously, while the creature moved sluggishly across his fingers and onto his hand. Monolith man was clearly flummoxed by the situation and consulting his radio settings. Sherlock allowed a rare and genuine smile to curl about his mouth as he examined the creature, peering close into the inky blackness of its huge eyes.

"Astonishing. I thought these had all but died out in the 1920s after the Spanish flu."

"It's a bee?"

"Not just a bee, John. A British Black, _apis mellifera_ , one of the only bees native to Britain and with us since the Ice Age. Look at its wing pattern, the darkened colour of its abdomen and thorax…" he turned his hand, awestruck; rarer, thought John Watson, than the bee itself.

"It's - it's pretty cool. How did it get in here?"

"Open windows, a plethora of flowers in vases, oppressive heat outdoors. The first question really is, where is its queen? The second, I fear, is how do we tell the amenable Mr Baynes that there has, after all, been a breach?"

A clattering of footsteps in the corridor, a sudden rush of air from a door thrown open and the bee abruptly found its wings, leaving Sherlock's hand and buzzing upwards towards the huge wall of memory boxes, and leaving half a dozen men (some dressed in hazmat suits marked ' _contaminants'_ and armed with what John could only describe as ' _bubbles on sticks_ ') below.

Mr Baynes stumbled into the room last, clearly not experiencing the best of days and wiping his brow repeatedly.

"The insect must be captured and removed immediately!" he panted. "The lightest touch could be disastrous! Contamination is not an option!"

Without consideration, Sherlock Holmes did not linger to contemplate, but leapt up and across the swarm of confusion, then up the nearest ladder towards the bee. The discovery had momentarily paralysed him with its beauty, but he was all action now. They would, either by design or carelessness, kill it, making the finding of the queen even more difficult. Sherlock ignored the cries from below and the tremors on the ladder as others followed, only knowing he must reach it first.

A shimmer, a glint of light refracted into a miniscule spectrum just to the right of his head, at the very extremity of the ladder's reach. Sherlock knew he only had moments, as the tremors were gaining in strength and momentum. Holding the evidence pot in his teeth, he reached up (so achingly slowly) fingers almost trembling in the empty space as the bee shimmied back and forth across a keypad of box no. _00110010.00110010.00110001.01100010_.

Sherlock blinked. How very strange in such a lazy universe.

He reached again, watching the bee's wings tremble for a microsecond in the solid heat of the late evening, and a single droplet of sweat beaded then trickled beneath his jaw and down the side of his neck.

He stretched another centimetre, every muscle, every sinew stretched to screaming point, until -

A heavy thud on the ladder below, his hand jolted forward, onto the keypad, smashing into it as his balance was catapulted into the wall, the pot clattering hopelessly to the ground, thirty feet below.

And the bee was gone.

 **~x~**

Of course he wouldn't let them call an ambulance (much to the private relief of Mr Baynes, who was currently counting down not just the weeks, but days until retirement) and forbade John, under pain of death, from contacting Mycroft.

"You were unconscious, Sherlock."

"For approximately thirty seconds."

"You may have hit your head in the fall."

"But I didn't; my trajectory was delightfully cushioned by several hazmat men and a substantial security officer as I fell. I was remarkably lucky."

Sherlock attempted a brisk walk down the steps of the institute, but truthfully his head ached and pounded in a manner he had never previously experienced and certainly was not about to share with his flatmate and live-in physician; it was too tedious and he was still furious regarding the bee.

"You passed out. I need to examine you." John held open the cab door as his annoyingly reluctant patient slid inside its pleasantly air-conditioned interior.

"I'd prefer a steak dinner," replied Sherlock, head swimming and nauseated but dead before admitting it. How Mycroft would adore such a ridiculous turn of events. _'I told you so'_ may as well be tattooed across his knuckles as he brandished that irritating umbrella to all who crossed his path.

Well, not this time.

He had to get back, keep down a few Panadol and begin researching the _apis mellifera_ and it colonising habits. This could be everyth-

As bright and as clear as a jpeg on his phone, the image appeared in his mind.

 _A tiny, perfectly inked cherry stalk, complete with variegated green leaves and pearlescent sheen across the apex of its two, glistening cherries._

A beautifully executed tattoo on pale skin had tumbled from his mind without summons or preamble. Sherlock bit down the panic, and closed his eyes, leaning back into the cool leather.

"Well, perhaps a cup of tea might be good," he conceded, John watching him carefully as the taxi swung into the brightly lit streets of central London and the first, fat drops of rain began to full from a laden sky.

 **~x~**


	3. Chapter 3

**VIII.**

 **Girl**

She was up to her elbows in actual gunk.

What had previously been a human being had, from the inevitable and inexorable progress of tide and time, metamorphasised, Kafka-esque, into a sack of putrid, gelatinous gunk, which offered her no opportunity for acquiring evidence and every opportunity for acquiring Vick's vapour rub beneath her nostrils and another packed lunch left untouched.

"Will someone - someone who has their actual hands free - please get the phone?" yelled Molly Hooper into the deathly quiet of the morgue. A deathly quiet disturbed only by the squealing of that incessant, intolerable landline.

"Blimey, you busy or something?"

If it hadn't have been Greg, she would have told them to fuck off (or similar), but there was _something_ about DI Lestrade that forbade her from being nasty to him. Oh yes, he was lovely.

"Bit busy with the Limehouse body."

"Ah. Anything doing?"

"He's mush."

"Ah, bugger. Still can't work out how he'd faked his death in '97. Thought maybe some forensics…"

"Probably a clairvoyant might be more useful at this stage. Sorry Greg."

She had really wanted to help and, as well, it was good Karma wasn't it? Beyond helping the police being her actual job, the little acts of kindness were good, and easy to do for some folks.

"Sherlock said he'd cast his eye over the case notes, when you've had chance to write them up."

There was a pause.

Maybe not always so easy though.

 _Mr 'Black, two sugars'_. She didn't need telling how he liked his coffee, she knew. She'd always known. Sometimes it was the little things that seeped through, no matter how hard you'd tried.

"Erm… OK, sure. I think he'd probably be a bit busy right now though?" She read the papers.

"Yeah, it's all smoke and mirrors Moll. We both know he's sitting by the phone most nights, waiting for one of us to call."

Molly smiled. She loved Greg and his thoughtful ways to cheer. He shouldn't have been a police officer (although he was much better at that than certain people recognised).

"You should have been a social worker. Or a counsellor."

"What?"

She shuffled her feet, suddenly embarrassed at the way the conversation was going, stood at the phone in an empty morgue with the remains of a dead man smeared across her scrubs, his stench leaching into her follicles as she bantered trivia with another. It probably was time to get back to work.

"I'm getting back to work now Greg. I'll email the notes in the morning and you can pass them on to … to Sherlock if you feel that's useful."

It was only when her hands were sifting through the loquacious contents of Limehouse's rib cage once more that she remembered she hadn't said goodbye to Greg.

But, then she'd never been an admirer of social conventions back in the day, had she?

 **~x~**

" **The past beats inside me like a second heart."**

― John Banville

Sherlock was neither asleep nor awake but his mind was an overwrought, churning, burning traction engine, powered by adrenalin and images, providing a seemingly twenty-four hour cinematic experience in vivid technicolour.

He tossed, he turned, he writhed across his bed, soaking the sheets in sweat, rolling between reality and imagined reality like a drunken sailor at high tide. It was only John's threat of ambulances and CAT scans which persuaded him to take two Mogadon and a cool bath, but dreams still nudged across his subconscious, refusing to be banished by pharmaceuticals and Mind Palaces.

 _( Have you worked out what it is yet? What's the final problem? I did tell you. But did you listen?)_

Spires, huge gothic curlicues and buttresses. Children (well, eighteen to twenty year olds, like him, but near enough children) walking, carrying books, smiling and laughing. Lovely, lovely, terrifying.

Echoes and dozens of seats rising up behind like a gladiatorial arena. Folders, files, periodic tables, gowned professors, his scrawl across reams and reams of A4 foolscap. Chemical formulae, stretching across page after page.

"They're spells, don't you think?" Freckles, shiny hair, small mouth, no lipstick. He tried to see her clearly , but it was a strobe lit lineage of images; flashes for milliseconds, then gone. "They have elements, but they're magical spells that delineate the universe." Long lashes, deep, dark eyes, brows like bird's wings, a small defiant chin and retrousse nose, a pixie girl. Nothing clear, just bright moments, glimpses. She spoke and he could not, but that was fine.

"I'm not ordinary," he said, days and weeks later. He meant normal, but could not face saying it.

She smiled, impish, secret, a sheen of silken hair skimming shoulder blades and collar bones, catching his eye and making his mouth go dry.

"Good," she said, touching him, making him close his eyes.

 **~x~**

 **IX.**

Sherlock looked drawn, had lost weight, obsessed about bees, newts, gothic architecture, his brother, anything, everything. John worried (nothing new there) but bit it back because you couldn't force that man into a conversation until he'd unravelled all of its outcomes himself.

But what if, this time, he didn't know the outcomes?

Edward Baynes informed them that no signs of the British Black bees could be found at the Institute and concluded the single _apis millifera_ was an isolated incident. Sherlock did not concur, but even _The British Apiary Society_ could not enforce a shut down of the largest memory storage facility in the country on the evidence of a single insect, thus a dead end and a snarling, atrocious few more days ensued.

Mrs Hudson went to stay with her sister instead of the other way around.

"She's seen London before, it's not a problem." She patted John on the shoulder as he helped her and her cases into the taxi.

"Does your sister have a spare room?" He was only half joking.

"Don't worry dear, he'll burn himself out of it. He always does."

"He's not a weather system."

"Isn't he?" She winked, closing the door and pushing down the window, but then, suddenly serious.

"But John, be careful." A pause. "I think he's _hurting_." Her eyes, when he caught them, were full and he found his throat holding a certain tightness.

"You do? After the fall?" He was playing for time.

She clasped her chest; small veined hands; bright rings.

"No, in _here_. I can see it in his face. His heart's hurting John. I don't know how or why, but our boy isn't the same. Keep an eye on him, please."

As the taxi pulled away along Baker Street into Marylebone Avenue, he wished he could run after it, but as it turned the corner, John turned back and walked slowly up the steps and into the darkened, silent hallway.

 **~x~**

 **X.**

 **The Economy Package**

It was an odd and unfair economy, considered Molly Hooper in her (admittedly few) idle moments, that allowed the rich more opportunity to remove their painful memories than the poor, since it stood to reason that poor folk would most likely have more painful memories to remove.

Poverty removed choices and certainly seemed to corral people into bad decisions and unfortunate circumstances, whilst simultaneously restricting their ability to do anything about it. People frequently took out second mortgages and risked loan sharks to rid themselves of their mental torment. Discreet advertisements advised that _'memory management'_ was infinitely more cost effective and less detrimental to one's health than narcotics or heavy drinking, the latter choices being far more temporary and haphazard.

The exclusivity of _The Anamnesis Institute_ and its ilk made the yearning all the more powerful. Why aspire to designer trainers when you could have a designer cerebellum? Yet, people had increased debt and fallen deeper into the poverty trap, especially the youth since formulative emotions traditionally ran high, and it was so much harder for them to understand how long a lifetime really was. Under 21's could not apply, but there were plenty of distraught eighteen year olds saving up and selling their possessions to erase the one who broke their heart.

Molly Hooper had been twenty one years old and had sold her little Fiat to raise the money, but it was still only sufficient for the most basic, _Level One Extraction_. The most damaging layer of memories would be skimmed away, but there was more danger of ' _breakthrough'_ when the subject was particularly anxious or influenced by a specific trigger. The actual event could be removed, but residual memories of the subject and their idiosyncrasies were harder to map and therefore more expensive to be extracted.

It made a person wary.

So many times, Molly had made a new acquaintance and ' _known_ ' something of them. Most times it was pure deduction, naturally forgotten information or the reading of body language (which she tended to excel at), but it nevertheless caused a rush of adrenalin and a heart-thumping surge of anxiety - _is this the person who hurt me? Could fate have them cross my path again?_

Molly had, in recent years, learnt to govern her reactions to these instances. She had moved away from her origins, found a career and a job and a whole new set of people who brought with them the potential for new love, and the chance to rebuild her heart and her friendships. Wasn't it rather unfortunate then that, just over a year ago, Fate had decided to be such an asshat about the whole thing and given her low-grade memory management package a real run for its money.

Sherlock Holmes.

The moment she saw him, standing aloof, querulous and utterly astonishing in Mike's lab that Tuesday morning, she knew they had met before. She also knew it had not ended well.

She brought him a cup of coffee, black with two sugars. After he drank it without query, she realised she had not asked him a preference and he had not supplied it. Arrogance had its own rewards, she supposed, but maybe Mike had mentioned it earlier and it had become lodged in her subconscious.

Maybe.

He had shown no recognition of her, barely acknowledged her in fact, but his coldness, his arrogance, his brilliance did nothing to deter the pull she felt.

He said her name twenty, thirty times during lengthy post-mortems or blood analysis or soil distillations in the lab and she knew it meant little to him - an acquaintance, a useful assistant, a colleague at best - but when his name rolled off her tongue, she felt the weight of every syllable and her treacherous heart hammered out a warning:

 _Don't._

The dress and the Christmas present had been ghastly mistakes. Weakened by the sentimentality of the festive season and the sudden breakthrough knowledge of how he had acquired the scar on his forearm _(climbing a tree when he was seven; his brother had left him for five minutes but he wanted to reach the nest with the pigeon eggs since he needed to compare it to the plover's eggs mummy had brought home from the market that morning)_ she wanted to do something to rattle him, make him see her. It was weak and foolish and backfired miserably. Memories of Sherlock Holmes were stowed away in a data file in _The Anamnesis Institute for a reason_. Really. People were their own worst enemies and it would serve her right if he did remember her and hated her with a fresh vigour.

Sherlock Holmes had clearly the wealth and the wherewithal to have utilised the _Level Six Extraction_ , a premium memory management package with a catalogue all of its own, and she was hidden somewhere in those stolen synapses. Not a lead role most likely, but some part of an earlier drama in his life which he was more than happy to live without.

Well, she would do so too. Leave well alone. Don't pick at that thread. Let sleeping dogs lie. Idioms, like memory files, were there for a reason. Live the life you want to live, not the one you used to have; the one that could have ruined you.

Things still seeped through _(you like to study tobacco ash; you know over 200 different kinds)_ but that was OK. She would aim for respectful friendship as that would right all wrongs, real or not, remembered or forgotten.

And so she did.

It was just a shame she hadn't had a more expensive car to sell.

 _ **~x~**_


	4. Chapter 4

**XI.**

 **A Case of Identity**

By the Thursday following his visit to the institute, Sherlock sat up in a snarl of sweat-soaked bedding and decided that his mind had wandered unfettered and reckless for long enough, and it was time for some semblance of order. A Mind Palace without order is just another average, chaotic, everyday brain, and he would not be tolerating one more moment of such laxity.

He would find the girl.

Everytime he woke, the images faded like the smoke from a firework floating into the night sky, but he would use what he had grasped.

Striding purposefully into the sitting room, he immediately noted John's raised brows but adopted his usual _'isn't it obvious, I'm fine'_ composure. Discussion was a retrograde step and he only wished to move forward.

He sat down at the breakfast table. They both buttered toast in silence.

John considered his friend, immaculate in blue Prada, planes of his face smooth and clear, hair corralled with just the appropriate degree of curl and decided it was a good sign and he would accept that Sherlock (clearly not wishing to discuss his brief descent into madness) was on the mend.

"Morning. Just toast today I'm afraid. Or Weetabix."

Sherlock shivered involuntarily.

"Yeah." John smiled. "Mrs Hudson back this afternoon, thank goodness. I can never keep up with the shopping when I'm on nights."

"She's been checking up."

John noted Sherlock didn't look up but his shoulders had tensed and he was awaiting confirmation.

"Ah, you know what she's like about you. She'll be glad to see you… looking better."

Lying in his bed, twisting to find a cool spot on the pillow, Sherlock could have set his watch by his landlady's landline ringing (once, twice, maybe three times until she remembered she had to call John's mobile instead) in the hall below. It was clearly going to be tiresome to prove how 'over it' he was when she returned.

Whatever 'it' was.

"Your case notes about Rucastle and the alambique distilling - "

John looked up, surprised. Sherlock rarely referred back to his blog notes, except to make light of them.

"'The Case of the Copper Gin Stills' you mean?"

"If you insist." Sherlock endeavoured to look bored as he stirred his coffee, hating how his heart pounded.

"In fact, all of your case notes over the past … year? I'm doing some data analysis about the type of clients we're attracting."

If John felt a shiver of suspicion, he never betrayed it. Really, his wrangling skills should be put into a handbook or something. A PDF. They could attach it to the website for potential clients…

"Problem?" Sherlock had cocked an eyebrow but looked distinctly indifferent.

"Sure, certainly. Help yourself. Need my passw-?"

"Nope."

Breakfast continued uneventful, but with John wondering if Sherlock knew he'd put four teaspoons of sugar into his coffee.

 _ **~x~**_

 _Case study 1: Violet Hunter (The Copper Gin Stills)_

Pros: physical appearance (long, auburn hair, freckles, delicate, age appropriate)

Cons: No university education

 _Case study 2: Annie Harrison (The Navel Tattoo)_

Pros: educated at Oxford; soft voice, sense of humour

Cons: Light eyes; could not stand the sight of me.

 _Case study 3: Mila McLaren (The Tree Students)_

Pros: Pale skin, freckles, dark eyes

Cons: Lived abroad since the age of five, only recently returned to England.

Sherlock stopped, letting the words blur and muddle before his eyes as he sighed and realised the futility of his data collation. He rubbed his temples, sitting back in his chair.

"What is happening to me?" he asked Billy, sitting non-judgementally on the mantle.

"What am I doing?"

He _loved._ He was no robot.

He loved his parents, his landlady, his flatmate and (even though it was buried deep beneath Pompeii-esque layers of fraternal resentment) his brother. He cared for Lestrade, Elise (his favourite member of the Homeless Network) and was developing quite an uncharacteristic fondness for John's new girlfriend, who had been speedily shoved in and out of Baker Street by John on a couple of occasions so as to avoid any experience of his deductive analysis.

But he had never felt a pull such as this.

A desire

A yearning.

An actual, fucking heartache.

Sherlock sat back in his chair, deleting all of his notes, knowing not one shred of his current condition had been initiated by these women who had been involved in his work life (which seldom had the 'balance' breakfast television and magazine articles always chattered on about; he was no set of scales).He _was_ the work and everything fed into that, but that didn't explain why he woke in the night, a barely remembered dream slipping away like flotsam, but leaving his heart pounding and tears welling in his eyes.

He sat up at the keyboard and started typing.

 _Dark eyes, seeing me_

 _Long hair, swinging, untethered_

 _Pale skin, freckled lightly_

 _Low laugh, contagious_

 _Touching me, pleasing_

 _University, Oxbridge, gleaming spires_

 _Chemistry, notes, shared_

 _Listening, helping_

 _Caring._

Christ, but now was he not writing poetry?

Delete.

It was the Institute. It had to be.

He had been somewhere he should not have been, touched something he should not have touched.

" _Very well, but know that the choice to do so is yours, Mr Holmes."_

Mr Baynes hadn't been agreeing with him, he'd been _warning_ him.

Sherlock stood up suddenly, blood draining from his face.

 _Forbidden._

" _Please do not override my wishes on this occasion Sherlock."_

" _You make rather grand requests without adequate explanation."_

" _I can only resort to earning your trust in this matter."_

" _My trust is priced considerably higher, Mycroft."_

Mycroft had also been warning him.

Sweat broke out across a skin that felt too tight; head swimming, pins and needles, black dots before his eyes.

Sherlock hadn't time to pass out he decided, staggering down the seventeen stairs, grabbing a coat that weighed around a ton and hailing a taxi -

He wanted his memories back.

 **~x~**

 **XII.**

 **Blocked and released**

The sibling of a big brother who was always watching, Sherlock was unsurprised to find all traffic lights against him and a definite increase in the number of roadworks situated between Baker Street and the Diogenes Club. He was unable to reach even a lackey of Mycroft's by phone on the interminable journey (but was proud to have refrained from abusive texting or use of emojis to compensate) so paid the cab off and began to walk.

This was a lesson he was being taught.

He had ignored advice and Mycroft wanted him to appreciate his mistakes a little longer before he would discuss this.

Each step he took, however, reduced his shock and stoked his anger. Sherlock knew anger was an indulgent and futile emotion, instigator of more problems than it could ever hope to solve, and yet he found its scarlet thread to be actually soothing in drawing in his jumbled thoughts and focusing his ruined mind palace to a more understandable notion.

Others knew something about him that he did not, and he hated not knowing.

Minutes stretched out longer, as did the city and Sherlock, who lived and breathed its highways and byways, found himself not in Kensington, but far North of the river, where unfamiliar billboards, shop fronts and graffiti signatures made him slow his pace and reach for clarity.

For some reason, he had elected to store the memory of a ridiculous youthful drama away in a database and it appeared that everyone (Mycroft at least) had indulged him. It was clear it had been a high level modification (five or even six) since he had retained no remembrance of having had the procedure, which was just as well, considering what was happening now. He was Sherlock Holmes. His mind was one of the sharpest and most organised there was! The idea of having segments of his life squirrelled away was so abhorrent, it was all he could do to quell the rising panic.

It was getting dark and the endless, damp and unfamiliar London streets seemed to stretch out interminably. He stopped beneath a street light and consulted his phone. Five missed calls from John, two from Lestrade and (unsurprisingly) none from his brother. He had no cash, no card, and felt sufficiently sapped of both ire and energy to sit down rather suddenly on a door stoop. He knew Shinwell Johnson from the Network hung about these parts when he wasn't being detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, so perhaps…

"Sherlock? Oh, is that you? Why are you sitting on my step?"

He looked up into the darkening shadows.

Molly Hooper.

Dark, wide eyes, bird-wing brows, long, auburn hair loosened from its band and an inexplicable aura of something so powerful, so simultaneously harsh and incredibly soothing, it almost took his breath away.

" _You_ ," he said, slowly standing, looming above her in the half light.

"Always, _you_."

 _ **~x~**_


	5. Chapter 5

**XIII.**

 **Hide and Seek**

Gregory Lestrade felt he was somehow a bit part player in a French farce and it wasn't for a play, it was for the rest of his life.

"Where the hell is my annoyingly elusive consulting detective? He was right there, next to that rack of test tubes just three sodding minutes ago!"

John sighed. The PDF was needing some serious updating.

"He had to pop out. Needed to see someone about some newts. I can get the data from Molly and pass it on…"

They both turned to look behind Lestrade at the still opened door to see - a distinct lack of pathologist.

Lestrade rolled his eyes, slapping the ramshackle sheaf of paper down on the nearest (luckily empty) bench.

"For cryin' out loud! She was right behind me." He looked like a child who'd just had a coin pulled out from behind his ear at a magic show.

"Third time this week. Tell Houdini I'd quite like a word, when he decides to rematerialise, if you don't mind John."

His keys chinked into the new bowl (Sherlock kept breaking it by excessive coat-sweeping and Mrs Hudson kept replacing it; this one was decorated with apples and oranges apparently painted by a four year old) and John could hear some distinctly discordant chords being tortured out of a very expensive violin upstairs.

"Greg's pissed off with you."

"Who?"

"Don't."

Sherlock stood at the window, as was his habit, surveying the street below and apparently ignoring the perfectly acceptable sheet music on the stand in front of him.

"So you've heard the alley cats have a vacancy since Ginger was run over last week."

"Droll. You have the notes from Lestrade I take it."

"Yes, but he wanted to discuss them with you and Molly."

"I am perfectly able to complete the analysis here. Why would I wish to clog up a very busy pathology lab with my presence?"

"All the med students have been asking that for years, but it's only now you've decided to stay away?"

Sherlock tucked the Stradivarius beneath his chin and brought the bow across its strings in such a hauntingly beautiful coda that the hairs stood up John's forearms as he turned towards the kitchen cupboards.

 _Jesus._

"What's going on Sherlock?" His voice cut across the music, but this was not the time to rely on the PDF's code of conduct.

Sherlock lowered his bow, but didn't turn to face his flatmate, instead dropping the instrument onto the sofa and sweeping up Lestrade's scribbled papers in one deft move.

"I'm flying to St. Andrews tomorrow. They've found another corpse in the river possibly linked to the Limehouse and River Trent bodies. Also, we are out of milk, your new girlfriend bakes her own bread, and I can never work with Molly Hooper again." He started for his bedroom. "I shall text Lestrade with the results."

The door was closed gently, but firmly.

 **~x~**

 **XIV.**

It had been almost five minutes and she was feeling ridiculous.

The longest anyone could legitimately need to be in a stock cupboard (unless stocktaking) had long since past, and someone could come in at any moment to discover her, a lead pathologist with many letters after her name to prove it, lurking amongst the bedpans and latex gloves with no alibi.

 _God._

How had it come to this? Greg was only face-timing Sherlock (who was actually miles away in Scotland) in her lab, but she'd rushed in here in a panic in case she should be seen, even in the background…

 _Of her own lab._

Molly looked around the top shelves once more, just in case they stored that last shred of dignity she appeared to have mislaid.

 _He_ knew. _She_ knew. Except, neither of them really _knew_ anything, except that knowing each other had lead to them both expunging all memories of their togetherness and hiding them away in a (usually) secure facility.

"You recognised me first, you should have moved away!" Sherlock had hissed through gritted teeth in her tiny flat that evening days before, showing a side of himself she did not associate with the cold, calm reasoning machine who strode around London like he owed it nothing.

" _I_ should have moved away? I have a career here! This is my _home_! I've lived with residuals of you quite nicely for years, Sherlock, without all of this fuss. _You_ \- you shall just have to … get used to it, like I have had to."

He paced, furious, frustrated and _so very human_. Why was cold/calm so much easier to deal with? She would prefer being shamed by cruel deductions to seeing all of this - _emoting_.

"My brain, Molly Hooper, does not operate like yours _(unspoken, like just anyone's)_ so forgive me if I have difficulty in smoothing over the self-induced lobotomy I signed up for as a teenager."

She almost (nearly) smiled. _Drama queen_. Who would have known?

He continued, pacing and pulling off his gloves, scarf, coat and letting them fall where they may.

"My mind is a racing engine, a finely-tuned machine which should not be operating with missing parts! _Why_ did we do this? _Who_ allowed us?"

Molly decided she would, to continue his analogy, throw a spanner into the works. As he turned to pace back towards her small kitchenette, she stood directly in front of him, pulling him up short with barely a hairsbreadth between them. She felt his heat, the huff of his breath across her skin.

"Stop," she murmured, quietly, and he did, the words dying in his mouth.

"I imagine, knowing myself, and quite a bit of you, we ignored all advice and did it to ourselves. Someone had to sign off that we were of sound mind and body, but other than that, no-one forced us; it wouldn't have been allowed passed the lie detector test."

He desperately wanted to speak, but she noted the effort he was making keeping his mouth shut and silently applauded him for it.

"As for why we did it, I honestly don't know. If you want to restock your brain attic (or whatever you call it) with what's stored at The Anamnesis Institute, then I can't stop you, but you've managed pretty well without that knowledge for the past fifteen or so years, so maybe you should - just - let it be."

He looked down at her.

Soft, brown eyes, small mouth with the palest skin. How had he not considered Dr. Molly Hooper before his perjured hippocampus had led him through a huge and sprawling metropolis, directly to her doorstep? She smelt of rosewater, formaldehyde and travel. She had never spoken to him so directly, bravely and utterly sensibly before; there had never been so much of a hint of this person stood before him ( _directly before him, almost treading on his toes; why wasn't he moving back?)._

"Where have you come from?" he mused, almost to himself.

"Bart's Hospital." Attempting humour at this stage was risky, but he smiled, and it was rather lovely.

"I didn't mean today."

"I know." She sighed, stepping away and slumping down onto her battered sofa, letting the tension drain. "But I did go to Oxford, so I would have most likely met you, or your social group, there."

Sherlock _hmphed_ his disapproval.

"I wasn't social. I didn't have _friends_."

 _(Dark eyes, seeing me)_

"Well, we must have been quite the enemies as I sold my car to get rid of you!"

She had gone for light-hearted, but it had come out all wrong. He was motionless, just looking at nothing.

 _(Low laugh, contagious_

 _Touching me, pleasing)_

"Sherlock, we have to decide what we are going to do. If you release your memories, it will have a direct effect upon me and my life."

 _(University, Oxbridge, gleaming spires_

 _Chemistry, notes, shared)_

"This is about both of our well being."

 _(Listening, helping_

 _Caring.)_

Sherlock suddenly jerked up his head, meeting her eyes with his: clear, wide, bright and mesmerising.

"We should probably aim to never see each other again," he said, blankly, and her heart fell, dull and heavy and redundant in her chest, like the echo of a time before.

Back in her self-imposed bunker (Anderson shelter felt a little too close to home) Molly Hooper no longer felt ridiculous.

Leaning against a crinkly stack of laundered and folded scrubs, she closed her eyes and took a breath. She had behaved impeccably.

Mature, honest, dignified yet considerate; a reliable colleague, a decent human being. She had stood before a man and made him see her qualities, her point of view, and gained nothing but his respect.

"But you didn't win," whispered Molly Hooper, to the disinfectant spray the AT's used to prepare the tables, to the paper towels stacked in reams of 1000, to the sutures, sealed and sterile in their multipacks of 250.

"You didn't win at all. You _lost_. You've lost something you can't even recall."

And she cried a little, knowing she'd hidden in the right place after all.

 **~x~**


	6. Chapter 6

**XV.**

 **Connections**

The fifth body was found back on home turf, near the Isle of Dogs, where a natural u-bend in the Thames allows such ghoulish cargo to slow down and 'pool' together, in turn allowing the Marine Support Unit fair chance to pull bodies ashore. Up to sixty or so poor souls can be discovered each year, but it's the job of London's oldest police force, first formed in 1798 to police the corrupt Port of Thames from its looting and robbery, to ensure no-one actually gets out to sea before they are discovered.

It was the job of Sherlock Holmes, however, to discover why this particular body had cause to be in an untimely, watery grave, and whether other recent watery graves might have some useful connection to one another.

"More than likely to be coincidences. Most river deaths tend to be - "

"Suicides?" Sherlock lens was over the nails, the hairline, the edge of his jacket. Up close and personal with a waterlogged corpse, but a tinge of humour to his rejoinder all the same.

"Are you sure you wish to pursue that line of investigation again, Lestrade?"

A private joke, probably in poor taste ( _"don't commit suicide"_ ), in reference to Greg's lack of confidence at press conferences. Although, if truth be told, Sherlock affected more offence at John's entitling of the taxi driver case, deeming it flamboyant to the point of being theatrical. He allowed it to remain "A Study in Pink" for reasons he chose not to clarify, bar it was their first case together and he was probably becoming far too sentimental these days.

"Yeah, still hilarious. Bloody hell, how can you get so close and not lose your breakfast?"

"I don't eat breakfast when I'm working _(in the pockets, beneath the heels, inside the lower lip - what was left of it)_ , slows me down."

He stopped suddenly, looking up at the DI. It was early morning and the relentless gulls wheeled and turned on the thermals the dawn brought with it. An evocative cocktail of effluence, engine oil, stagnant water and gutted fish travelled with the gulls on the breeze, reminiscent of a river that had travelled through so many centuries.

"He was an engineer, you say?"

Lestrade flicked through his notebook; he was old school regarding note-taking.

"Mmm… yes. Jeremy Bridges, unmarried, freelance. Reclusive, according to his neighbours."

"My word you are on the money today, Lestrade. It's barely 6 o'clock. I would imagine Mr Bridges to have been lacking in employment in recent weeks, months even." He held up a grey hand, swollen and bloated by the water, but not too far gone. "No callouses, ridges, with evidence of an actual manicure around the third and fourth fingernails." He laid the hand down, letting the slowly rising sun bring a growing warmth to his face and almost making him close his eyes. He was so very tired these days.

"He has the soft hands of someone who handles nothing more heavy duty than a keyboard."

"Strange. You're looking for - ?"

"Connections. Different cities, different rivers, but there must be some commonality between these people, and I believe it lies in their occupations."

"All different."

Sherlock shook his head, slowly standing, pushing his lens away and stepping back onto the ladder leading up from the crime scene.

"No, there's always something."

"I'll have Gina in IT run the names through the system again. Change the search."

"Do that."

"I'll text."

"I know."

True to his word, Lestrade had texted by 3pm, insistent on a meeting at NSY. Three pm on a Saturday afternoon would, one imagines, be a quiet time in a public building; the chances of bumping into someone one knew, out of their usual environment, seemed negligible.

One would expect.

Molly stepped into Sherlock's lift at the second floor but it took her until the fifth to say something (anything).

"I've got the floater you saw this morning."

She looked around, quite pleased they were alone after all.

"I mean, I've looked at the body."

Sherlock glanced at her, since lift etiquette clearly demanded some kind of interaction and, truthfully, he needed to see the real Molly Hooper rather than the kaleidoscope of random images swarming in his head night after night.

She was small, fragile almost, but bright enough to fill the space between them with warmth and if he knew nothing more at that moment, it was how much he liked it.

"I see."

Her eyes were wide, and closer observation allowed him to see the admirable effort she was making, for him.

"I do have some theories - " he began, slowly.

"So do I."

He stared at her, all awkwardness gone.

"I think I knew him," she added, hitching her folder closer to her chest. "He went to my book club."

 **~x~**

 **XVI.**

 **Idiots**

Mary Morstan stopped, waiting for the lights at Giltspur Junction, and decided she quite liked John Watson.

He was loyal. He had relied on others to watch his back on the front line of an actual war and expected, in the face of the very harshest adversity, to do the same for them. If John Watson cared about you he would go down fighting for you, whatever the personal cost to himself. He was strong, fierce and plucked empathy from the air about your head whether you deserved it or not. If you had earned his trust, you would always walk the battlefield with an ally, a friend (and sometimes) a lover.

Mary crossed the road, remembering how he would touch her - like no-one else ever had (or ever would) matter to him again - and she shivered slightly. She knew how rare that sort of loyalty, that honesty, really was. Mary was honest (within the parameters she had selected for herself, the life she now was living) and she expected it from others.

 _Sherlock Holmes_.

Now there was a man of contradictions Mary considered, taking the side entrance and waiting for the lift. So full of truth, but so full of untruths; smoke and mirrors, Box and Cox, bob and weave. Sherlock, she was sure, was living his own brand of truth too, but was he always sure where the truth ended and the lie began?

She didn't yet know.

He used disguise, subterfuge, false identities to draw people out of the walls they had erected to hide behind. It was his job, after all; the world's first consulting detective, owning the wonderful, dazzling light of genius to shine through the lies of others and cast out the truth.

She already liked Sherlock and his quick-fire, manic deductions tripping over themselves as they left his mouth, but he was still a man, a man who lacked self-awareness and was still oh-so-slightly uncomfortable in his own skin.

Mary smiled as the lift doors opened and she walked down towards Laboratory 1 on the fourth floor. John had been vague about meeting times, but she had arrived at least 15 minutes early since she wanted to be really sure of catching Mr Sherlock Holmes in his workplace and doing a little observation of her own.

"Excuse me, could you tell me where Lab no. 1 might be?" ( _winning smile; she'd been told it was disarming)_

"Mmmm, hello, yes. It's straight ahead, first door on the left. It's my lab, actually. I'm Dr Molly Hooper, and you must be…?"

Fabulous. Her timing could not have been better. Girlish ponytail offset by dark, searching eyes.

 _(who are you? What do you want here? I am on my guard; I've been on my guard before…)_

"I'm Mary, Mary Morstan. I'm meeting John Watson here."

Dr Molly Hooper's enquiring eyes suddenly illuminate, igniting her small face; open, welcoming, slightly apologetic.

She was rather lovely.

"Mary? Oh, John's girlfriend! Yes, I've heard all about you; well, not _all_ about you, but … well, some things… good things, obviously… but … well, John has said … mmm ... here we are!"

The door opened wide, revealing low lights, localised spots over microscopes and a low buzz from various, unidentified bits of machinery. Brushed steel surfaces glittered, immaculate in the dimness and the smell was an pungent aggregate of disinfectant, hand wash and other, undefinable aromas.

"You get used to the smell," confided Molly Hooper, shuffling through what looked like yards of computer printouts as she nodded towards two figures in the far end of the room, one dark and seated at a microscope, the other fair, standing close then looking up, looking at her with a wave.

"Mary, hey!"

Sherlock's bright eyes flashed up immediately too, their intensity and focus both a slight shock and a distinct delight.

But they weren't looking at her.

 _ **~x~**_

Molly and Sherlock had spread the sheets across one of the burnished benches, he leaning over, hands spread wide, eyes scanning, searching, then pointing, turning, speaking; she nodding/shaking her head, scribbling, biting the end of the pen; he frowning, sighing, shaking his head, biting his lip; she watching, tapping her teeth, smiling.

"They've decided not to go back to the Institute then?" Mary sipped a heinous brown beverage masquerading as coffee as John gathered his belongings, looking pretty pleased to be beginning his Saturday evening.

"Apparently not. There was a moody, awkward day or ten, but I think it's probably OK now. Some things are best left alone."

Mary said nothing but her eyes never left the pathologist and the detective.

"They're friends, they've come through it stronger." John rummaged around, looking for his wallet, his keys.

"They know they were at Uni together, shared some modules, social awkwardness and were generally brilliant at science and stuff." He jangled keys triumphantly. "Let's go, I'm starving. They'll be hours with the data wrangling."

Mary moved, throwing the plagiarised coffee into the bin.

"They may be brilliant," she murmured, almost casually, holding the door open for him, "but they're also idiots."

 _ **~x~**_


	7. Chapter 7

**XVII.**

"Jeremy Bridges was not a member of your book club, Molly."

Molly barely faltered in her step; it was difficult to keep up his pace as it was. The moon was high and the streets deserted, testimony to how long he'd kept her in the lab. Offering to walk her home was definitely progress though, even if ' _walk_ ' had been a blatant mis-sell.

"OK."

"You're not going to ask me why."

"Would my asking effect the outcome of the telling?"

"Mmm… no."

She waited, grateful for the slight slowing of his gait.

"I've seen your bookcase no less than a dozen times over the past two years."

"You've been in my home twelve times? When? How?"

"A currently irrelevant line of questioning."

"If there was any type of line, Sherlock, I feel you may already have crossed it by all the breaking and the entering of my flat."

He waited a moment, then:

"Each time, Molly, there have been only two types of literature populating its shelves; cookery and crime. You make macarons and you read about murder."

She blushed, cringing into the ever useful darkness.

"Occupational hazard, I suppose."

Sherlock continued.

"Embarrassment is pointless and less than useful. The real point is, your book club would vary your reading matter significantly more than your bookcase presents and your recent purchase of a MacBook Air for home use suggests you might be branching out."

 _God. He was relentless._

"I cross-referenced your recent off-duty rotas with all of the crime writing workshops within a 15 mile radius (your Oyster card is a Zone 3 only) over the past year and there it was, Greenwich FE College, 11th to 13th December, _Creative Crime Writing: Beginners to Professional_ \- "

"Enough!"

She had stopped, holding up a hand.

"Yes, I did meet him on a writing course. I changed it for… _simplicity_ , and the fact that my career choices are already weird enough, without my leisure pursuits teaming up to make all friends and potential partners run for the hills."

Sherlock stared, motionless and orange-tinged beneath the tungsten street light.

She sighed.

"Also, I was really crap at it. Shockingly so. Turns out knowing how a victim is slowly poisoned by a lethal alkaloid isn't the same as writing layered characterisation and a well-structured plot."

They resumed walking and Sherlock found that he was also glad of the shadows casting across his face in the night air.

 _ **~x~**_

 _ **XIX.**_

 _ **Ghosts**_

He climbed up the stairs, finding their rise more challenging than he usually did, sometimes clambering up with his hands to add leverage as bony knees in grey flannel shorts mounted each one.

He wasn't quite sure what the urgency of his quest was, but it most likely involved his brother and his 'sensible' precautions, which invariably resulted in tell-tale-ing to mother and father. It was most infuriating considered Sherlock, reaching for the door handle at the summit of the staircase, since how can one produce ash samples without actually burning things? The smell was a small price to pay for evidence, for facts, for data.

The room was bright, blinding almost, flooded with light, and he rubbed his eyes trying to make out silhouettes, familiar shapes.

It must have been summer (the shorts, the open windows, the birdsong) and he could feel the breeze across his face, freckled slightly by the summer sunshine of his seventh year on earth. Curtains rippled slowly, reaching out to caress a rocking horse, teeth grinning rictus-like as it too swayed in the wind blowing through. His eyes adjusted, making out his fort, wooden soldiers scattered about like fallen warriors and most unlike his usual arrangement of their sentry duty.

Bricks scattered too, so many bits of Lego around the floor; this wasn't his doing thought Sherlock, just before he heard the whimper that built into a cry and then a wail. He stood, still amongst the bricks and soldiers, letting the breeze blow the tangled curls from his forehead while he watched the horse, rocking and grinning, creaking into its imaginary canter and listened to the sobbing of a baby.

They didn't have a baby.

"You shouldn't be in my room!"

His words came frail and fearful, since he could not account for this disarray. The crying didn't stop and Sherlock's seven year old heart thumped in fear which science and logic and evidence could not explain.

The horse continued to rock, but had no answer to give.

 **~x~**

"More nightmares?"

John stood halfway down the stairs, sleep ruffled and concerned which inexplicably annoyed the recipient of his query.

"M'fine."

Sherlock sat in the midst of four cold cups of tea, an open laptop and a copy of _Die Traumdeutung_ lying open and face down on the sofa. He knew he looked like hell and that John Watson was neither stupid nor without sympathy. He just didn't have the strength to parry his ruminations and opinions.

But John said nothing and descended the remaining stairs in his trajectory towards the kettle in silence. After almost ten minutes, by which time Sherlock had drunk an entire mug of tea and pretended to read his emails, John said:

"Different this time, I reckon."

Damn him; he was learning far too fast.

"I was a child, searching my childhood for something, listening to phantom infants in a family where I was the youngest. It can't be any more memory seepage; it simply didn't happen."

"Dreams represent your subconscious, your desires, rather than a straightforward memory."

Sherlock tapped the book next to his thigh.

"Dr. Freud has that covered it would seem." He sighed. John meant so well but he was so very tired. It was the fourth night of the crying baby and his distorted childhood and he was already missing _DreamMolly_ from his nocturnal wanderings.

"Go back to bed John. You have surgery in three hours and I have a murderous crime writer to apprehend. We have enough real mysteries in this world - "

"Yeah, I know," John sighed, standing and gathering mugs left right and centre. "No ghosts need apply."

 **~x~**

Sherlock stared at his photographs of Molly Hooper's crime-logged bookshelves, scanning names, arranging authors into groups and sub-groups. Where was the link? Fictional crime was not his forte; it was too trite, too conveniently tied up by the finale and the clumsily layering of clunky clues throughout which made his teeth ache.

Connections, connections, and … a name that appeared multiple times, resulting in an internet search and then phone call to Molly Hooper.

"J.R. Bessemer."

"Mmm no. Molly Hooper actually." Oh, the world was full of comedians.

"The author. His work has become less popular of late. Forums show fans becoming disgruntled with the inconsistency of characters, plotlines and quality of writing, A new Bessemer novel would have entered the Sunday Times best sellers list at number one, but the last two only made it to number 5 and 7 respectively."

"Yes, you are right actually. I didn't even pre-order the latest one… Sherlock, what's going on here?"

The victims were all ghost writers, and all for the same author.

That was the connection.

The Trent, the Tay, the Thames rivers had all given up the corpses of people who wrote stories for others, and there would be more he was sure of it.

Now he just needed to find out who was next.

 _ **~x~**_

 **XX.**

 **Drowning**

The water was dark, engulfing, choking every pore of his body, filling, soaking, dragging him down.

Moments that could have been seconds or minutes apart and the water broke as he gasped into air that pulsed with sound and light: shrieking sirens, flashing orange, blue, red, fragmented across an endless, frothing blackness. Men shouting, someone screaming - a woman...

Wide eyed, she scrabbled wildly at his face, his shoulders, his hands - too desperate to see she was pulling him under, a pyrrhic victory where all would perish.

" _My…_ " water filled her throat, he felt the current drag at his thighs, his ankles.

" _Bay…_ "

A new noise, a rumble in the darkness, water churning about them with a renewed ferocity as her eyes locked on his and for one brief moment, conveyed her greatest fear.

" _Ba… by! My baby!"_

Mercifully free of his coat, Sherlock still felt the drag of the Thames, taking his remaining shoe, her scarf, the very air from his lungs as they struggled and were sucked beneath once more.

 _ **~x~**_

John held the bowl for his friend as Sherlock retched and heaved and emptied the river from himself.

" _Jesus_ , Sherlock," he repeated pulling the blanket tight around each convulsion. "Jesus Christ!"

Bessemer's ghost writers, it appeared, had turned tables on his appalling treatment of them, and when they threatened exposure, shame and ruination, he wasn't having it. He had decided he would kill them; all of them.

"It was like a plot from one of his books."

Thirty minutes later and a merciful break in puking allowed John to ruminate and Sherlock to crave an entire packet of Benson's. Both shared Sherlock's trolley but no degree of cajoling or threats had enticed the latter out of his soaking clothes and into a hospital gown. He was so tired of those.

"An appallingly unconvincing plot which goes a long way to explain his falling sales." He hoped John wouldn't hear his teeth chattering but considered it unlikely. "Is she still improving? We need a statement-"

"No, _Lestrade_ needs a statement whereas _you_ need to come home and get into a hot shower. She's fine and they've found the daughter - perfectly safe." John looked at his friend's face, parchment white, hair plastered down, bare feet, shivering with a combination of cold and shock, and felt a lurch in his chest.

"You did good, you lunatic. Maybe not a solo mission next time, eh?"

"No time."

"Yeah, yeah." He smiled, gathering himself as the door swung open. "Drama queen."

 **~x~**

Mycroft had, at least, shown sufficient decency to send a car since no cab would take them considered Sherlock as they squelched through A&E, lit by fluorescence and ignored by the post-pub conglomeration of drunks and punch ups.

"God, hello Molly! He's OK, he's OK. The police have Bessemer, and Selina Broderick was pulled out of the river in the nick of time. She was very definitely next on his list."

Dragging his attention from the triage queue and directly into the soft dark eyes of Molly Hooper, Sherlock anticipated her annoyance at his foolhardy behaviour but instead saw something else: _relief? Worry? Care? Hard to say._ She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by a flurry of activity from a side room as a nurse emerged holding a baby girl, no more than six months old and writhing like a basket of eels.

"Dr Hooper, thank goodness! This little one's mummy is needing a rest after being so poorly tonight, Social Services aren't here yet and I need to fetch her some milk from upstairs. Could you possibly…?"

She held out the struggling infant, apparently not needing verbal consent and all three watched as two new bright eyes fixed on yet another stranger holding her this night. Soft and peach-like, her fuzzy head nuzzled into Molly's neck and her tiny fingers stretched like starfish, wrapping around her white collar. Cheeks, pink and rosy from an overheated hospital and general distress at the unfamiliar; small knees and toes curled up, koala-like and clinging. She snuffled, whimpering slightly, nearing the end of her underdeveloped patience.

Molly looked down at her, polite smile fading and odd look of recognition passing across her face. Small fingers curled around her thumb and Molly broke her trance, looking up, beyond the small tufted head and straight at Sherlock.

He stared right back, eyes widened, pupils blown.

The silence between them was broken by John, slightly bemused by it.

"I think she likes you," he smiled, rubbing the curved back of a child who had come so close to losing her mother that night. "Thank God she won't remember this."

But as brown eyes met blue, no words were needed between Molly Hooper and Sherlock Holmes, and long-lost memories bubbled up to the surface at last, breaking through the rolling tide into the harsh, bright light of realisation.

 **~x~**


	8. Chapter 8

**XXI.**

 **Friends**

"You begged my allegiance, my affiliation Sherlock. I was dubious, but reluctant to refuse such a plaintive request."

In truth, Mycroft could not then nor now deny his baby brother anything as his loss would be untenable.

"You implored me to support the process at The Anamnesis Institute and all subsequent precautions thereafter. The re-emergence of Dr Hooper into your world was less than ideal, but the universe is fond of playing tricks on those who try to counteract it. You were advised against the continuation of your most recent investigation, but your … stubbornness allowed you to conspire against yourself."

Sherlock held his head in his hands as he sat opposite his older brother, strangely unable to offer up his usual brand of snipery.

Molly Hooper. _Molly._

Doctor, colleague, friend? Yes, definitely a friend.

Always.

Initially, he had been blind, dismissive and curt, but he really did now know that Molly Hooper's friendship had stretched over more than just a few years; it had begun half a lifetime ago.

 _(Dark eyes, seeing me_

 _Long hair, swinging, untethered_

 _Pale skin, freckled lightly_

 _Low laugh, contagious_

 _Touching me, pleasing_

 _University, Oxbridge, gleaming spires_

 _Chemistry, notes, shared_

 _Listening, helping_

 _Caring.)_

Mycroft had been most forthcoming in filling the blanks, but there were things, details he could not have known - memories returned by both _apis mellifera_ and a bond so strong it had withstood decades of denial.

A boy away from home and familiarity, without the easy confidence of youth and camaraderie towards his fellows; a boy unable to connect, to understand such complex social interactions, a boy with such powers of knowing and yet not knowing the melee that surrounded him daily. He became misunderstood, mocked and ultimately ignored and so assigned himself protection, a carapace of aloofness; an armour to reject before becoming rejected, an aspiration to _care less_.

And he almost succeeded; he fooled others and very nearly fooled himself, until she came along.

She saw the armour and elected to ignore it because she saw _him_ , and it was irresistible.

" _Faure_."

He ignored her, gathering papers, notes, scarf. The lecture had been limited with ignorance of new research; lazy.

"I said _Faure_. The New College choir are rehearsing _Pie Jesu_ tonight at seven. Wondered if you wanted to come with me, to listen."

He sighed. Another dare he imagined. He had noticed her around campus: reasonably perceptive and most likely aspiring to a medical career (although not an entirely straightforward one); dead father, no siblings and burdened by a mother who would never find her quite satisfactory enough.

He looked up. She had kind eyes. Ridiculous.

"You are free to wonder, but I am unable to follow your reasoning."

She grinned. "My reasoning?"

"Your supposition. My interest in choral music, my need for company from a stranger - "

He stopped when he saw the hand she was holding out, smile still intact and eyes entirely devoid of duplicity.

"Molly Hooper." She waited, patiently.

He sighed.

"Sherlock … Holmes."

"Brilliant. Now we're not strangers anymore. Wanna come?"

He knew how fragile his armour was when a bright haired girl (with reasonably perceptive eyes) blew it away with a kindness that brooked no self-pity and allowed him to believe and accept her interest in his friendship.

"Not making any notes today then? Organic chemistry in the bag already Sherlock?"

"I'll remember what is useful, if anything."

Molly smirked, unpacking her bright orange notepad and selection of fluffy pens.

"OK, but I'll be testing you on it later. You're bound to forget something."

"No. I use a variety of memory storage and retrieval techniques which allow me to visualise useful information when I need it, like a mind attic."

Molly tilted her head, looking at him for a moment; he really was rather wonderful.

"Nah!" She concluded. "Not _attic_. Someone like you, Sherlock Holmes, needs a mind _palace_ for everything you're going to store."

It was then he realised he trusted her, probably more than safety allowed.

 _ **~x~**_

"Well, I for one certainly feel happier."

"As you should, being his mother."

It was the Easter break and Sherlock was down from Oxford, bringing (at his mother's request) dry washing in from the garden and chancing upon a woefully unanticipated exchange between his mother and his elder brother. He stood deathly quiet in the porch, still holding the basket.

"Mycroft, you are fully aware of how worried we've been. We knew how difficult it would be for Sherlock to … fit in. He must have made friends."

Heart hammering, a hundredweight of dry shirts pulling at his arms, Sherlock found himself rooted to the spot, unable to intervene, to put a stop to this conversation.

His brother's voice returned, assured, smug, unbearable.

"Friends? Sherlock is no plate spinner in the commerce of social interaction. He has _a_ friend and she has become very close, very quickly."

"A girl? My goodness."

"Don't expect a happy announcement by the end of the week. Her gender is irrelevant but, remembering Redbeard, you know of Sherlock's intensity with things he cares about."

"' _Things_ '? For goodness sake, Mycroft!"

"Things, animals, people. They are interchangeable. Once he has an interest, a focus, it becomes everything. We must be ready to support him when it fails."

Sherlock backed out silently, into the garden and around to the cellar entrance where he took the side stairs to his room.

 _When it fails._

Such an appalling aggregate of cold analysis and protection (possibly even a warped version of _love_ ) left him glowing hot and slightly nauseous. He had been too open, too obvious and allowed Mycroft to deduce him so readily. Molly Hooper was nobody's business but his own and nobody was allowed to touch her with their invasive and damning summations. How could anyone understand? It was theirs, only theirs, and everyone else could … _fuck off._

The basket of dry washing remained in the garden until the rains came again and soaked it through.

 _ **~x~**_

She jumped high, knees grazing the stonework and their fingers brushed, so she jumped again and this time, his hand grasped at her wrist and held tight, pulling her up onto the ledge, into his darkness.

Immediately he pulled her close into him she saw his teeth and eyes glittering in the shadow of the parapet above them, and she knew he was loving it. A long finger hovered across his lips but she wasn't going to make a sound, there were way too many pissed off people coming their way to risk the kind of trouble a girl with chemistry modules to pass could well do without.

Within seconds, a gathering thunder of heavy footfalls and rising, angered voices could be heard gaining force across the quadrangle, and she could only hope no-one would see their precarious perch from the cloisters. Molly was aware of Sherlock's arm across her chest and shoulders, preventing her from toppling forwards, so close, she wasn't sure who's heart thudded loudest. She tried to control her breathing, gritting teeth through the tremors starting in her cramped feet and calves; it really wasn't a place to be hanging around for very long. Shit, if he'd just keep the deduction thing to a hobby, a parlour game or something, to bring out to impress the grannies at Christmas. Instead, it rose up, like an unpredictable cobra, at the most inconvenient times with the most inconvenient people, as could be witnessed by the almost incandescent rage of Victor Trevor, rampaging through a University quadrangle on a cool, damp summer's night.

The men were close now, Victor and his cronies gradually slowing so that they stood (incredibly) just below their hiding place. No attempt was made to lower voices.

"Fuck, Victor!" gasped one, and Molly chanced her own bit of deduction about his fitness levels. "Fuck! Leave it man, we've lost them!"

"Can't see a thing," panted another, leaning on the pillar just beneath Sherlock's foot. "Just forget it, we'll get him back, don't stress about it."

Victor spat out a very imaginative (if physically impossible) litany of expletives outlining what he was most likely to do to " _that fucking weirdo_ " should he get within lunging distance, and Molly sincerely hoped Sherlock's Ju-jistu classes were coming along as well as he insisted they were.

"That," he breathed, dark huge head just two metres beneath, "is the last time he makes a fool of me in front of Professor Moran, or any of the fencing committee! His smart mouth will get him into a fucking world of pain one of these days ... spreading lies about people! Ruining my reputation on campus…!"

There was a slight pause as the group dragged the air back into their lungs, grateful to have stopped, and Molly felt long, slim fingers dig into her shoulder urging her strength and holding her fast at the same time.

"Mmm… that thing about your grandfather and your inheritance though Victor. You told us about that last week. Was Holmes there?"

"Yes, and about your allergies and how it caused such a problem with Charlotte; there's no way _she_ would have shared that, Vic."

Molly felt the urge to cough stronger than any other physical impulse she had ever experienced, but held her breath to suppress it as Victor Trevor growled at his fellow apes, cracking a few skulls as he went.

"Get the hell out of here you arseholes! I'll be meeting up with Holmes and that bint Hooper soon enough, don't you worry about the how and the why… _move it!"_

The flange had barely left the cloister when Molly's near petrified feet gave way and she slid down from the parapet, landing in the soft grass below, rolling over and shaking. Within seconds, Sherlock had landed (a tad more gracefully, and not unlike a cat) beside her, running his hands over her, checking for injury until he realised she was shaking with laughter.

" _Bint_! Oh God!"

"Molly - I am mortified to have endangered you! I am sorry, I was showing off. It got a little out of hand. You didn't have to get involved."

He sat down on the grass, relieved, adrenalin surging, laughter bubbling, heart soaring. Truthfully, he was elated. Victor Trevor had caused an inordinate degree of self-seeking and destructive nonsense for several others in the college and Sherlock had had enough of it. He hadn't meant for it to go so far, or for it to involve Molly (but she had quite obviously decided to involve herself - _annoying_ ) but the results had been tremendously satisfying, even if he'd have to watch his back for the next six weeks. He could watch his back though - we was getting rather good at it.

"Oh my god, when you said about that rash in front of his girlfriend!" Molly re-lived it again, inducing fresh waves of mirth until she had to hold her stomach.

"And the swindling of his brothers regarding his grandfather's legacy! So cruel, Sherlock! So diabolical! So relent- "

But it suddenly became difficult to complete her sentence, since his _(perfect, beautiful_ ) mouth was kissing hers and that was … _most unexpected._

When he stopped and pulled away, she found herself afraid of how much she wanted him to continue.

Now they were both breathing hard, sitting in damp grass at 11pm in a deserted university quadrangle, staring in the semi-darkness, but seeing everything all too clearly.

"If you apologise for that," she whispered, not without her own brand of savagery, "I shall never forgive you."

And so he didn't.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for all the fabulous reviews, favourites and follows - you are so lovely. :)**

 **Just forgot to mention re: Ch 7 - there is no Eurus Holmes in this universe. Mycroft and Sherlock are the only Holmes siblings. Hope I didn't confuse things with that omission! Thanks to Analena who kindly mentioned it.**


	9. Chapter 9

**There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.**

 **~ John Keats**

 **~x~**

Although Sherlock only had one, Molly didn't. She was smart and funny and friendly, and had several close friends which was usually quite nice.

 _Usually._

"So you're shagging Keats then?"

 _Here we go again._

"Since I don't actually hang out with any dead Romantic poets, sexual hijinks seem most unlikely, Amy."

Amy, almost six feet tall and with the wild Celtic hair of a young Boudicca, poked around her salad with a look that plainly said ' _you disappoint me'_ but failed to be side-tracked.

"You look different, Ms Hooper. You look … _enamoured."_

Molly was flustered, accidentally throwing her sandwich in the bin and keeping the wrapping.

"You mean Sherlock."

"Mmm, yes. _The hot consumptive._ Keats, Shelley, Byron, but I'm favouring Keats due to the undoubtable virginity - unless you can put me right on that?"

Horrifically waggling an eyebrow, Amy pushed away her salad so that Molly was torn between mortification and disapproval of all the food waste occurring that lunchtime. She opened her mouth in response, but those wild, titian curls shook from side to side in denial.

"Don't even start with the ' _just good friends'_ spin Hooper (leaning forward conspiratorially), and _yes,_ I have seen the way he looks at you."

"Nothing has - " _(accidental, adrenaline-fuelled kisses could happen to anyone. Kiss. Singular.)_

"Believe me," said Amy, her large and powerful voice distilling right down into a whisper, "it _will_."

 **~x~**

 **XXII.**

 **Non amicis**

Four days after what Sherlock had filed away in his Mind Palace as ' _The Quadrangle Event'_ he stood straight and tall, adjusted his music stand and settled the violin into position.

 _(he did not elect to think of it)_

Raising his bow, he flicked at its tautness, frowning at the necessity for more adjustment. It was all very well Mycroft insisting on gut for its 'mellow intensity', but wire would have lasted longer and been less susceptible to the humidity. He tightened, loosened a little, then drew it gently, the resulting note rising long and irritatingly perfect into the summer evening air.

 _(yet he could think of nothing else)_

The notes cascaded, light and fragile as cherry blossom, carried through his open window and out across the cobbled courtyard. They danced from the strings, tripping over themselves to be released into the sweetness of the world, carrying their songs with them.

Only slightly irritated at his own whimsy, Sherlock's fingers flew across the fingerboard, no note less than perfect, and he found he could not suppress a smile.

 _(cool night, hot mouth, radiating a heat that spread outwards from their lips that had never truly dissipated)_

Slowly, the coda repeated, building upon itself, carrying its melody until it broke into the crescendo that had layered across his thoughts over quiet, solitary days and warm, restless nights, and cascaded down, like soft and cooling rain.

A lock of hair fell across his brow, sweat breaking out across his upper lip, but still the bow rose and fell, faster and faster, over and over, and Sherlock closed his eyes, not needing the notation anymore as a sudden breeze flipped page over page.

 _(he ached to touch her again, no-one had warned him, he had not been prepared)_

 **~x~**

Molly heard the music before she even turned the corner, notes plucking at her hair, her tee shirt, lifting her, pulling her with them. She walked a little faster, holding her bag strap tight across her chest to stop it banging into her as her pace increased.

 _Sherlock._

It had to be. No one played like him. A boy with a suit of armour, a set face, stiff back, cool eyes and no friends. This was his heart, this was his passion; so many emotions spilling out of him without him even knowing what they were, and for all the world to hear.

Suddenly, she was running.

 **~x~**

As she raised her hand to knock the music cut off like a thrown switch and the door was wrenched open. Molly saw his face: raw, open, visceral, naked, and she could hardly believe his eyes had ever been cold.

"I never really liked Faure," she said, breathing hard, not able to look, giving him a moment.

"You're wearing lipstick," he murmured, low and quiet and she touched her mouth (ridiculous).

"You never wear lipstick."

She managed to look up (long hands still holding bow and violin, bony wrists, pale and gangly arms and grey, tattered tee shirt, clinging to his spare frame).

" _Nirvana_? I would never have guessed."

Sherlock looked down at his shirt, face calmer, eyes cooler and small smile tugging at his mouth.

"I like ' _The Man who sold the World'_." It reminds me of my brother." He pulled her into his room, closing the door firmly. "And may I remind you, Molly Hooper, that despite my demeanor, I am (in fact) still only nineteen years old."

He cast the (expensive looking) instrument across the sofa and bent down to gather the spilled foolscap music from the floor. She could see the knobbles of his spine and the curl in the nape of his neck and she already knew she was _in trouble_. Playing for time, she plonked down onto his narrow bed, pulling off her bag and fiddling amongst her books (keep your hands busy) pulling out a scrumpled handful of papers.

"Mmm… bought you the notes on alkenes and cycloalkenes from Moran's lecture since you … weren't there."

"Moran is horribly derivative, lacks intuition and I had better things to do."

He had finished gathering and was shuffling the manuscript paper into an envelope. She suddenly twigged.

"You bloody well wrote that?"

He stopped, looking at her, indulgent, smiling, proud(?)

 _(God, she really was in trouble; best leave now, before it was too l- )_

But Sherlock was holding the envelope out to her, eyes warm and glittering.

"Yes. I wrote it for you, _about_ you. Look, your name is on the top."

Her hand slightly shook as she read, sure enough:

" _Molly's Theme, by Sherlock Holmes. June 1994"_

And as she pulled him down to kiss her, she reasoned that even the highest court in all the land could not have held her responsible.

 **~x~**

 **XXIII.**

 **Pay the piper**

Usually, he could watch his back, always be ready, never be caught off guard; but this time was different.

This time he was distracted.

Molly coated his days and nights and he could not see beyond her. Even eating and sleeping was an unwelcome necessity which he avoided whenever possible.

But some things could not be avoided, and when Victor and friends held him down in the darkened lane behind the Presbytery at St. Mary the Virgin, he could do nothing but listen and fight to avoid suffocation from the large arm across his windpipe.

"I warned you Holmes, you little shit, but did you listen?"

Air trickled in, but it wasn't enough. His chest was burning and leaden and they were quiet this time, careful not to attract attention.

"It wouldn't be as much fun to beat you, so that won't be happening." (yet he could not resist a little kick to ribs that were struggling to rise and fall).

"So, listen carefully Sherlock, listen now, because this is all about your _girlfriend_ …"

He involuntarily writhed, but the arm grew tighter and black spots were swimming across his eyes in the darkness.

"Hooper's dad was quite a clever fellow it would seem. An excellent reputation as a biochemist and owner of a profitable business, until his tragic suicide that is. Seems Mr Hooper had a tremendously prolific gambling habit which led him down that boringly predictable path a noble fellow goes down when he finds himself shamed by losses and a burgeoning drug habit."

Sherlock could not struggle; his body felt limp and not his own. Their faces were fading and their voices faint.

"But, guess what? Hooper has no idea; nobody does but us, and I'm imagining you'd like to keep it that way, especially at exam time and all. Fergus, let him fucking well breath you idiot! He's going to pass out."

The weight lessened and glorious air rushed in, choking him in his greed to breathe, expanding his lungs and almost making him vomit.

Victor's face was now down, level next to his, all red wine and (expensive) cigars on his breath and the beginnings of a respiratory problem that was going to plague him in his later years.

"So, I am _requesting_ , _Sherlock_ (as we are now on first name terms I feel) that you stay away from your lady, or we will let her know all about her father's true end. I can see you are a gentleman, therefore you know that a lady's distress and shame must be avoided at all costs. Are we agreed? If you need a reason for this, just remember that being the biggest smartarse in the room doesn't always make you a winner in the game of life. Your misery is my only reward, my recompense for your previous slanderous behaviour. I do hope we understand each other."

The coughing had subsided enough for him to answer, but he scowled instead.

Victor laughed, but then why wouldn't he? He held all the cards now.

And, as their footfalls grew fainter, all Sherlock could do was lie across the cobbled ground and question any real need for breathing after all.

 **~x~**


	10. Chapter 10

**XXIV.**

 **When it fails**

"You look like shit Hooper."

Amy, larger than life and more able to identify a carbon allotrope than a heartsick friend caught up with Molly during a particularly bad morning.

Currently, the status was as follows:

 _I have an an exam tomorrow, in which I have made notes on only half of the syllabus (therefore only realise one tenth of that half)_

 _I am permanently exhausted and subject to the worst outbreak of acne since I was sixteen. Plus greasy hair like chip shops had suddenly started designing shampoo._

 _My heart has been stolen, trampled and chewed up by an evil wizard. Evil wizard seems both reluctant and unavailable to give me back the pieces. I am pretty sure that I love the evil wizard and his stupid bloody violin._

"Really? And I went to all that effort too."

Amy got in step and they walked in (merciful) silence for the next 2.5 minutes.

"Still no word from Howl and his moving castle then?"

She'd waited a bit. She was improving. Molly shook her head, an expectation her grim expression and less than delectable attire might serve well enough to give Amy the general picture.

It was true that (previous to _the Night of the Violin)_ Sherlock would disappear for days on end, utterly immersed in some investigation (chemical or otherwise) and would simply reappear, perhaps a bit tireder and thinner than usual, but still his essential self. But now, she'd not seen his essential self for over two weeks and somehow, since all of _the sex_ (during which he displayed an astonishing learning curve, like he'd read all the books and configured spreadsheets or something) a distinct vulnerability was creeping in and making her needy, and she hated needy.

"You'll definitely see him tomorrow Hooper; even Sherlock Holmes has to turn up for end of year exams."

 **~x~**

 _How had it all gone so wrong so quickly?_

He arrived late, giving her a pale nod. Being totally distracted by her lack of knowledge, appetite and churning imagination, Molly could barely write an equation and only succeeded in adding to her masochistic musings by glancing across at him, scribbling away without a care in the world. Leaning forward, his angular body awkward and cramped in the seat/desk combination, his hair (wild, untameable) fell forward and as he stopped to tap his pen across his teeth and Molly Hooper simultaneously realised she was in love with him and how hopeless that actually was.

 _Shit._

Awkward smiles, shuffling to leave the exam room, enforced proximity; all suddenly a problem when there had never been one before.

"You ... mmm… look different. Have you done your hair differently? Parted at the side?"

 _Dear Lord._

"No, I just added a bit more oil for that special, chip shop look."

His eyes widened slightly, like he wasn't used to her humour, and that hurt more than the politeness.

She sighed, determined not to ask him.

"You seemed to have been writing a lot, for someone who missed about three quarters of his lectures."

Sherlock shrugged as they mercifully moved forward into the bright sunshine of the late morning.

"I made an algorithm to predict the questions. It turned out Moran was more than predictable: it worked unexpectedly well."

"You've not been revising like a demon ( _evil wizard_ ) then?" Surely the subtext was as clear as day, even for him. Sure enough, he shuffled, looking down, uncomfortable.

"Molly, I am sorry, but I have several important projects running simultaneously and need to devote some time to them before going down this summer." He was deathly pale, but she hardened her heart and gave him a moment to finish. "This," he gestured vaguely about them both, "this isn't … isn't really…"

She looked at him, giving him nothing.

"... this isn't really my _area_. I do like you, but I am unable to give you what you may want."

They had walked away from the melee and come to a stop beneath Hertford Bridge, shaded by its faux Venetian beauty, until she looked at him, cold as N2 itself.

"You have absolutely no idea what I want, Sherlock Holmes," whispered Molly, words strong, head held high, "since you have absolutely no idea what it is _you_ want. For a clever, clever man, you know nothing of any real value in this life. I will say that I have cared for you enough to hope that one day you find your value." She turned, nauseated and trembling but damned to show it before her parting shot.

"Laterz," she said, walking away.

 _ **~x~**_

The day after their final exam of the year, the majority of first years were let loose on the Union and the streets of Oxford in search of cheap cider, Hooch alcopops, loud music and general debauchery, just as Sherlock Holmes found himself standing before the assistant Dean, being forced to offer up some kind of explanation for his behaviour.

The Dean (cat lover, cheating on his girlfriend as well as his wife) peered over his spectacles at the notes the Porter of New College had been compelled to provide him with, up at Sherlock, then down at the notes again. He appeared unsure as to where to begin, so Sherlock decided to help him out.

"I imagine you have communicated with my brother, Mycroft."

The assistant Dean flickered but gathered himself.

"Ah yes, Mycroft. Already on the ladder to success in government I believe; an ex-alumni we are particularly proud of."

Sherlock ignored the inference, deciding the assistant Dean had seen the last of _his_ assistance.

"He vouches for your... excellent character, and thus I am puzzled as to why the altercation with Fergus Delany in the library yesterday occurred." He consulted his notes. "Mr Delany reported making only a non-inflammatory greeting to you and yet was rewarded with a bloody nose, missing tooth and _two_ black eyes, Mr Holmes." He emphasised the _two_ as if one black eye would have actually been OK.

Sherlock's face remained blank.

"Apparently, he smiled (according to witnesses) and said 'glad to see you doing so well Sherlock' after which you punched him in the face." The assistant Dean lowered his notes and peered at Sherlock over the glasses again, with eyes clearly exhausted by keeping up with the demands of a much younger lover.

"How can you explain this?"

"To me, it was inflammatory."

"Well, it is certainly unacceptable in New College, and if it weren't for your brother's recommendation and you astonishing first year results, I would have no difficulty in sending you down. As it stands, you will be allowed to retain your place for second year after you have apologised to Mr Delany and - "

But Sherlock had already gone, the only evidence of his presence being the draft from the door rustling the papers clutched tight in the assistant Dean's hand.

 _ **~x~**_

He was breathless yet pale, almost grey as he leant into the door jamb. Amy had prepared herself for something like this, but the sight of his astonishing, translucent and red-rimmed eyes almost unhinged her best intentions.

Almost.

"You'd better come in," she said, holding open the door.

It took Sherlock less than a second to understand.

"She's gone? Already?"

"Exams done; _all_ done," returned Amy, arms folded but not chastisting as he sank weakly onto a nearby chair. He seemed so… ruined.

"You're not going to tell me where, are you?" His head rested wan against his hand. He'd lost quite a bit of weight he could ill afford. "I could find her."

"Why would you want to? She told me what you said, how you behaved."

"I love her," he said, as it was all he could offer, and she knew immediately it was true.

"Shit." Amy also sat down suddenly, surveying him with a flicker of empathy. "Then why - ?"

"Reasons I am not at liberty to discuss with anyone, but I do need to see her, to explain as much as I can. I'm leaving today and not returning in the autumn term."

Her eyes widened, but she didn't ask. He quite liked her.

"Sherlock," she said, seeing neither a hot consumptive nor a heart-stealing wizard, but a boy who was lost. "She said I was to tell you that if you respected one single thing about the friendship that you had then you should allow her this one request; that you shouldn't deduce her (or whatever it is you do) to try and find where she's gone. If you care, she asks that you leave her be, whatever the circumstances."

He looked up sharply, all fragility gone, and she saw just how mercurial those eyes could be. He stood, walking slowly around the flat and Amy wondered if she should ask him to go. His eyes were everywhere, touching at invisible dust or dirt, or something. She'd heard others speak of this but seeing Sherlock Holmes survey something was both disturbing and … mesmerising. He suddenly stopped, turning towards her and Amy, for all her warrior queen appearance, felt herself quail just a little.

"' _Whatever the circumstances_ '... ? You may as well tell me, since I already know. I probably knew last week, but thank you for the final proof."

Once again, Amy's large voice was rather small.

"She's pregnant," she said.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: In the interests of warning, please be aware this chapter deals with loss, particularly loss of pregnancy.**

* * *

 **XXVI.**

 **Loss**

" **So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.**

 ** **(E A Bucchianari)****

As much as Mycroft Holmes enjoyed being right about everything, he found small comfort upon seeing his younger brother the day he was sent down from Oxford. Predictably, his parents flustered and flailed but the practicalities were (as usual) left to him. Luckily, two years of no annual leave taking in Whitehall meant he had some weeks to attempt to rehabilitate Sherlock, but it was not actually about practicalities.

"Surely the Dean will see sense," reasoned their father. "I rode with him in the hunt every weekend last winter; I am sure he'd be reasonable."

"Being comrades in animal slaughter does not necessarily ensure a 'violent and unpredictable' student his place in one of the most prestigious universities in the world," returned Mycroft, dripping more than ever with sardonic sneer. He was always much ruder to his parents when Sherlock was in trouble.

"And you say it's all over a girl? This would be the same girl you mentioned at Easter? The one you insisted would be a flash in the pan and 'fail'?" Their mother was smoking and pacing, two things she disliked but felt were appropriate modes of behaviour during family crises.

Mycroft looked down at her, narrowing his eyes against the smoke and fighting the yearning with all his might.

"It has failed, which is why your son is a walking ghost and currently lacking rest, vocation or a reason to get up in the morning ."

"The Dean said - "

"The Dean," smiled Mycroft, more pleasantly dangerous than he intended, "can actually go and fuck himself. Now, would anyone like a cup of tea?"

 _ **~x~**_

"Sherlock, you really need to stop doing this."

"Why? So another entitled arsehole can have his way? Succeed in the world? His horses were ringers - they would have struggled to win a Donkey Derby on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I was doing everyone a favour."

"You have no jurisdiction in cases you find titillating in the local newspaper. The is the third occasion and I happen to know Inspector Bradshaw does not enjoy your daily phone calls. If you are interested in this kind of … law enforcement, then perhaps enrol at Henley Grange in October when police officers are recruited - "

"The police are idiots. They have no scientific method and make very few advantageous deductions. Why would I wish to join their ranks? I would be wading through imbeciles."

Both lay across ancient wooden sun loungers on the vast south facing lawn which were conveniently placed behind a small copse of apple and pear trees in order to hide the fact both occupants were smoking like chimneys (Mycroft had given in gratefully on day two).

"I do wish you'd cease in your irritating attempts at rehabilitating me. I'm now firmly addicted to nicotine and will therefore no longer wish to put my head in the gas oven on a daily basis."

Sherlock wore shorts and an appallingly threadbare grey tee shirt emblazoned with a fading band name. His hair was far too long and limbs far too skinny, but he had lost some pallor and had never mentioned Molly Hooper again since that first day. Mycroft himself wore spotless chinos and a polo shirt, but it would be pointless to compare.

"Your unsuitability as a police officer is further corroborated by your endemic problem with authority and the fact that we have had an electric oven for the majority of your life."

Sherlock smiled, taking a deep draw of the cigarette and adjusting his sunglasses.

" _Baking_ , Mycroft. So much more your area."

That very morning, Mycroft had received a thinly disguised grovelling missive from New College, offering Sherlock a place in September but wasn't sure a reminder around every quadrangle was the healthiest of options. He had yet to mention it, since his time here wasn't supposed to consist entirely of practicalities: he needed to speak of loss and of healing, neither which he felt equipped to tackle, but wasn't life all about countering disappointment at every juncture? Thus, Mycroft steeled himself, putting out the cigarette and sitting up slowly, but Sherlock, a coiled spring at the best of times, was up and reattaching flip flops to his feet.

"Nope," he said, grinding his cigarette into the lawn and leaving Mycroft to consider a less obvious approach for next time.

There wouldn't be long to wait.

 **~x~**

Sherlock rolled along his bed sprinkling ash across the duvet and wrapping the wire awkwardly across his neck. A cordless phone would have been lovely but his mother was deeply distrustful of technical innovation and wouldn't entertain the plug in dial up connection he yearned for either.

"If people are unable to lick a stamp then there's very little hope for the world."

He added it to the list of things that made his teeth ache.

 _(Heart ache had a separate list, but he couldn't open that door in the Palace)_

"Wiggins, I am most grateful for your… input in this small matter… yes, yes, you can fax me the information at the same number… no, I don't have access to the internet currently… yes, I think this will be of mutual benefit… yes, I appreciate a man who can keep his ear to the ground. Goodbye."

Sherlock replaced the receiver, staring sightlessly up at his cracked bedroom ceiling and allowing a self-satisfied smile to creep across his face. It was early in the game, but he predicted another twenty-four hours would be enough time to see the end of Victor Trevor's reign of corruption at New College. There was always someone who could talk, given the right incentives, especially when you have made your name trampling the names of others. Victor would be sent down (criminal proceedings extremely likely, unless his father also knew the right people) and justice would be done. Everything would be fine.

He rolled over to the bedside drawer, but the packet was empty and he was vibrating with … adrenalin? Energy? Triumph?

Sherlock sat up, the suddenness making his head swim and his nausea swell. He could not account for the churning medley of emotions rising and falling like the tide and pulling him under in quiet moments (like this one), but he could sense one rising above the rest, bright and burning and crackling with spite.

He was _furious._

Hiding feelings from Mycroft was a deal more difficult than from his parents and the effort was exhausting. The cases, meant as a distraction, just served to feed his anger, the seething rage that worried him as to its containment. Hitting Delany had felt so cathartic, but it didn't last long and only succeeded in adding more fuel to the fire. Holding out his long hand, Sherlock spread his shaking fingers then clenched them. His anger was tremendously concerning, but he couldn't help considering it the plug of the volcano, temporarily containing all that lay beneath.

He remembered every single word of every single conversation. He remembered her gentle teasing, her bright orange notebook and the atrocious fluffy pens making wide, bold scribbles across the page. He recalled with great clarity the night he pulled her onto the ledge of the presbytery, holding her warmth, her softness into him, shielding her, protecting her. She smelt of ozone, cherry lip balm, Body Shop white musk and burnt toast and her heart beat strong, like his, with the same pulse. He felt the foolscap of the manuscript in his fingers as he passed it to her, the brush of her fingertips and the genuine astonishment in her eyes ( _"You bloody well wrote this?"_ ) and the heat of her mouth, her skin, her silken hair wrapped around his hand as he pulled them closer, everything crackling, bursting and shattering like glass, glittering shards spilling around them, making him feel everything in the universe through her, with her. He could touch the stars and it was incredibly addictive.

 _("you have absolutely no idea what it is you want")_

He could not cry about Molly since he was too afraid.

 _("I have cared for you enough to hope that one day you find your value")_

But he was choked, churning, burning with echoes of the past, like a seismic charge awaiting an event.

He got up, hearing the fax in his father's study clatter into life.

Victor Trevor: there was a man who was going to _burn._

 _ **~x~**_

"Sherlock! I've been shouting for you from the other end of the house!"

Sherlock shuffled through the sheets, still warm from the machine. They looked promising indeed.

"Then perhaps more serious consideration to my suggestion of walkie-talkies?"

She huffed. "Ridiculous. There's a telephone call for you, just pick it up in here."

Sherlock's eyes glittered; Wiggins seemingly had been busy.

"The caller ... it's a girl," continued his mother, almost softly as she closed the study door.

 **~x~**

"Hello Sherlock, it's me, Molly."

"I know."

Silence, then:

"I need - "

"I'm sorry - "

He waited, heart bumping, breathless.

"Don't be sorry, it doesn't matter Sherlock. It doesn't matter anymore."

"Everything I said - it wasn't real."

There was nothing but static for a moment as he organised his thoughts; it was like wading through slurry. What was the most important thing to say? He should say it before she hung up…

"How - how are you?" _(Let me help you… let me save you…)_

More silence. Excruciating.

"I - I'm OK, Sherlock. I'm going to be … I thought you should know…"

He stood, still as a statue, staring across the stuffy room, lined with certificates, photographs of hunting meets, trophies gathering dust, celebrating death. There were some moments you never forget -

"I lost the baby, Sherlock. It's gone."

\- unfortunately.


	12. Chapter 12

**XXVII.**

 **Memory Boxes**

 **"We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it." ~ Rick Warren**

Behind his desk in the Diogenes Club, Mycroft looked across at his brother, fifteen years after he had been begged to ransack his memories of a girl and the mistakes that had been made. He had eventually complied, since a boy like Sherlock felt things so strongly, so fiercely, so destructively.

Fifteen years, and a career built on cold, hard logic and reasoning without sentiment; ignorance of the chemistry of love and its destructive nature. It was what Sherlock had craved and what he had become and, bar an accident of fate, it could possibly have continued that way.

Or perhaps not.

After an typically dismissive beginning, and despite the memory extraction at the Institute, the friendship of Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper had already been showing signs of re-emergence. Edges were curling back like paper, allowing their true selves to realign and form new synapses, new connections. Was the human brain not a miraculous organ? Where there has been something so powerful. it seemed there was an insistence on re-establishing such a bond.

Sherlock had forbidden him from offering the same privilege to Miss Hooper at the time, knowing she would never accept such a charity, but it seemed she had made her own choices towards a similar destination.

"You are now in full knowledge of your past, Sherlock. What you must decide now is your future."

Sherlock looked up, still shocked, but recovering with every moment and torn by conflicting feelings at every juncture. It was exhausting.

Mycroft smiled slightly.

"Too many emotions?"

"I've lost count. How do people live? How must this impact on their day to day life? They must get nothing done." He raked his hands through his hair, cradling his skull, wondering how to hide a sneaking and genuine admiration for his elder brother.

"It's life, Sherlock. People manage and they get by. I am told the rewards are … not insubstantial."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at this brother, but without true rancour.

"What would you know of love?" he asked.

"Nothing whatsoever," returned Mycroft, with the sparest glimmer in his eye.

 **~x~**

The building stood, shaded by trees and dappled with sunlight that morning; benign and almost welcoming with its sweep of steps and discrete brass plaque beside the doors.

They stood at the foot of those steps, just has he and John had stood some weeks before and stared upward, waiting for something.

"You're vacillating."

"As are you."

Molly waited, the slight breeze lifting stray tendrils of her hair, casting them where it wished. Judging by her poorly buckled shoe and carelessly buttoned shirt, she had changed her clothes at least twice, lost or broken her last elastic hair tie and needed to return home for her Oyster card. He completely understood and his heart twinged a little for her. This was empathy. He liked it.

She turned and looked at him, collar up, _(those cheekbones)_ shoes and suit immaculate, nothing to betray his feelings except his reluctance.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" He looked down, seeing her with eyes that were soft, so she took a chance. Molly reached out a hand so it hovered next to his and uncurled her smallest finger, hooking it around his.

"You've told me everything I couldn't fully remember, everything I was hazy about."

Birds in the trees twittered and carolled to each other, searching for their mates.

"But, truthfully, it was coming back anyway."

"Those Level Ones." He smiled, but didn't unhook his finger.

"Yeah, cheap and not so cheerful."

He flexed his hand, slowly slotting his fingers inbetween hers, cradling its warmth and tightening his grip.

"And when I held Selina's baby - " _(tighter)_

"I know."

They turned to face each other, still amongst the pedestrians glued to their phones, the Deliveroo boys on their bicycles, red buses trundling by and the beginnings of another London morning. She looked up into his face and it was like coming home.

"I don't need to open a box," began Molly Hooper slowly, fearful of the tightness in her throat.

" … to know - " Her voice sank to a whisper.

"Sherlock, I don't need to open a box to know how much I _loved_ you."

They sat on the bottom step of _The Anamnesis Institute_ and held each other close after fifteen lost years and she stroked his hair.

"Don't cry," she said, softly. "It's OK, don't cry."

But he did, and it felt incredible.

 **~x~**

 **EPILOGUE**

 **Three Years Later…**

The process had been lengthy with the Committee having multitudinous individual cases to consider and thousands of words of testimony to plough through. Unprecedented public support, however, had resulted in a verdict buoyed up by a united and relentless social media campaign which had made Brexit look like a walk in the park. Memory Transference had eventually been deemed unlawful by the Board of Ethics and the _Freedom of Remembrance Trust_ had been disbanded. Institutes like the _Anamensis_ had been closed down, their boxes returned to owners to do with as they saw fit. People, it would seem, were going to have to learn how to cope with the bad things in life, because (as Mycroft Holmes testified at the final hearing at the High Court) "that's what people do."

" _Suffering is an unfortunate part of the human condition, but without it, we are less than human and we become ill-equipped to navigate our days and nights. Having no knowledge of your mistakes means you are unable to learn from them and are unable to move forward, taking your place in a considerate, supportive and symbiotic society. Life is not perfect, so we all need emotional strength and support of one another in order to take on its challenges."_

 _(Sherlock Holmes, in his closing speech to the Memory Transference Investigation Committee on 12th November, 2019)_

 **~x~**

"Sherlock, what is your understanding of ' _my best side'?_ "

"I have insufficient data at present."

"Very diplomatic, but I can tell you, without equivocation, that it is _not_ from underneath. I have at least seventeen chins from that angle!"

Sherlock showed mercy, lowering his phone as Mary stepped down from the table and cast a critical eye across the symmetry of the bunting.

"You are a bloody camera Nazi, Sherlock Holmes."

"You two need to stop bickering and let me know where to put three hundredweight of Jammy Dodgers and cucumber sandwiches from our landlady's kitchen of delights."

John Watson's arms were indeed overloaded with trays wrapped in cling film and brightly coloured biscuit boxes. Sherlock raised his eyebrows. Inexplicable. He feared for the digestive systems of future generations.

John dumped his cargo across the table, scattering sellotape, balloons and paper plates and earning an eye roll from his fiancee.

"Bunting looks wonky," he said, blandly.

 **~x~**

By 4pm, bunting had been forgotten and Baker Street was crammed to the rafters with several generations of family, friends and a few friendly faces from New Scotland Yard. Mrs Hudson was quite in her element, forgetting the hip and passing out cucumber sandwiches and a cherry coloured punch of dubious origins. Mr and Mrs Holmes had been rather taken with the latter and John decided a taxi might be a judicious decision before the evening rolled on much further.

"Whatchya thinking?"

Mary slumped down on the arm of his chair, scattering crumbs and waggling her eyebrows.

"Just stay away from the punch, it looks potent."

She smiled.

"Naturally. Who d'you think made it?"

"Wicked."

"Adult consumption only."

"Maybe elderly parents needed a warning too."

Mycroft had arrived late, but compensated considerably with a bottle of Dom Perignon '68 from his own cellars and a large cake, iced beautifully with yellow flowers and ribbon.

"It's wonderful that you still find time for baking, Mycroft," smiled Sherlock, filming his brother and the cake's arrival as well as his parent's punch-laden jollity in the corner. "Something for the commitment hearing," he added, lightly.

Mycroft affected to ignore him, only placing down the cake, hooking his umbrella on the mantle and holding out his arms.

"Put down that phone and give him to me," he smiled, eyes only on Sherlock's newly-one-year-old son who was balanced on his father's hip and holding a mushed up strawberry in a tight fist.

"Your uncle wishes to show you off and share his appalling day with the Brazilian Ambassador with you. Your comments will be greatly appreciated."

The boy crowed in recognition of his favourite uncle, throwing up small arms and leaving go of the strawberry. Sherlock laughed. He laughed a lot these days.

He watched the ruination of Savile Row by strawberry as they walked to the window, then Sherlock felt two arms snake around his waist and a small, smiling face press against his back _(icing sugar, champagne, baby powder and Body Shop White musk - still)._

"Hey, Sherlock Holmes. Pleased to meet you. I'm Molly Hooper."

He smiled as a warmth spread through him.

"Good afternoon Miss Hooper."

" _Doctor_ now, if you don't mind."

"Apologies, Doctor Hooper. I am pleased to meet you too, but have the strangest feeling we have met before."

He turned around, touching her face, shoulders, hands. Checking, assessing, wanting (needing).

"May I take this opportunity," he said, quietly, "To congratulate you on our son. He is magnificent, as are you."

"You may," her eyes shone, bright and dark at the same time, exactly the same as eighteen years previously, and his heart swelled in recognition, in remembrance.

"You film so much," she added, smiling as he placed the phone in a pocket and wrapped both arms around her. "You must have hours and hours of the past three years. With a memory like yours, is that totally necessary?"

"Back up," he said, gently into her hair, kissing the top of her head. "I never want to miss a thing."

 **THE END**

 **(but not quite...)**

 **ADDENDUM: What do you need?**

Sherlock leant over the microscope again (as if a judicious squinting would alter the results) and hissed a curse between his teeth.

Idiot forensics at the scene had ruined the chance of any of the fungus surviving and the sample was useless: another chance for Forrester to go free and make good his escape this time. By the time Anderson adjusted his coarse focus, the thief could be halfway to the Maldives with his safely stashed pocket of emeralds.

A sudden and shockingly tinny chime echoed through 221B, interrupting his thoughts and making him jump. Neither he, John nor Molly had quite acclimatised to the new doorbell. He feared it might soon befall an unfortunate short circuit. Luckily for all, Ben was out with Mary and his mother and not subjected to its eldritch squeal.

"May I help you?"

The woman standing on his stoop was striking indeed. Almost his own height, her bright titian hair standing inches higher, framing her face in a fiery halo. She was swathed in woollen shawls and what appeared to be Viking brooches and she sported a lipstick that highlight a wide generous mouth which was smiling at him in an altogether too familiar manner for a stranger. Oddly, there was a shudder, a glitch in his thought process, suggesting an inexplicable familiarity he was unable to account for. Perhaps she read John's Blog and affected some faux affiliation as was so irritatingly commonplace in today's celebrity obsessed society.

"Sherlock," said the mouth, a tad fondly for his liking. Perhaps someone from Molly's mother and baby group? A group of assorted women, meeting up to compare milestones and drink tepid tea in a draughty church hall with nothing in common but the agony of birth and a keen eye on the competition.

"Molly is out. With the baby." He gave her what he hoped was a regretful smile and made to close the door, made that bit more difficult by her (size 10?) foot. Amazingly, she was still smiling.

"You haven't changed a bit," she said.

 **~x~**

Before she said her name, everything had suddenly flooded back in through paralysed synapses.

"Amy. Of course, _Amy_. ("exams done: _all_ done") You must accept my apologies; neither of us opted for full retrieval."

"I know. I heard. You built from the ground up."

"Not entirely. Most has been restored yet we prefer to make our own way."

They were walking up the stairs since she was disinclined to _'come back later'_ and he knew from her tells that she had something in her satchel ( _hessian, leather-thonged_ ) she wanted to give to him.

"Everyone is out."

"I know. It's you I wanted to speak to. I would love to catch up with Molly later, but for now..."

They walked into the sitting room and he was momentarily pleased regarding its relative tidiness since he remembered liking Amy, and being grateful for her mercy at the time.

She immediately saw the picture _(everyone seemed to find it irresistible; he could quite see why_ ) and stepped one huge Valkyrian stride across to the mantle to pick up the frame. She stared intently for a moment and when she looked back at him her mouth lifted and her eyes glistening slightly.

"He's _so_ like you, like you both really, but there's a beautiful innocence there that's purely _you_."

Rather than irritation at such nonsensical whimsy, Sherlock felt a pull at his heart as a woman he barely knew looked at a photograph of his son.

"He's beautiful," she added, replacing the picture. "A good boy?"

"Undoubtedly. He has his mother's temperament, a beauty from within."

They stood for moments as he waited for her to gather herself. Molly and John had mentioned (several times) how patience was quite useful in situations such as these, and people gave more if allowed to take their time. Her fingers played around the clasp of the bag and Sherlock gestured to the chair.

"I have something for you."

"Oh? Polite. No pushy deductions.

"I always hoped I'd have the chance to give it back. Molly entrusted it to my care before she left Oxford that Summer - "

He leant forward, heart suddenly haywire.

Excruciatingly, her hand hovered above the open satchel, fingers frozen in time and causing Sherlock to clench his fingers and toes and grit his teeth.

"It meant so much to her; she couldn't take it with her, but she couldn't throw it away - "

He wanted to leap up and snatch the bag from her quavering hand, but he didn't. The things you do for love.

The manuscript was still in a faded brown A4 envelope, dulled and slightly creased by years of storage, but still undamaged after eighteen years away from both its composer and its muse.

"Thank you," he said, looking directly into Amy's softened eyes and meaning it. "Thank you Amy, for remembering."

"Ah, I was waiting for my moment. When I saw you both in the papers at the Investigation Committee hearing I nearly looked you up, but it was early days, so I ... I waited. It wasn't until I saw the announcement in The Times about your boy being born that I knew it was the right time."

Sherlock ran his long fingers over the foolscap, remembering summer nights of intoxicating desire and yearning, all poured into scrawled notation across stave after stave as his youthful heart was almost overpowered by an unstoppable torrent of _wanting._

They sat in silence again, but without discomfort, more a strange companionability built on the half-remembered ferocity of youthful emotion.

Amy suddenly stood up, offering a hand to shake and Sherlock found himself strangely reluctant to see her go.

"I've had three husbands," she announced, almost casually, "so I know loss and I know heartache." She gathered her strange, archaic robes and affected a quiet dignity one could only respect.

"I also know now when you should let go and when you should fight for love. I saw you two shatter and it haunted me for years, so I decided The Anamensis Institute didn't deserve your memories and that you needed to have them back, to decide for yourselves."

Sherlock's eyes were wide.

"The note pushed under the door - _"_

She grinned.

"It was indeed me."

She stood on the stoop again, grinning, adjusting her satchel, consulting her phone and considering a job well done.

"A woman like me doesn't sit around waiting Sherlock, which goes someway to explaining the three husbands. I decided to set the ball rolling and ... well, here we are."

Sherlock watched after her taxi as it pulled away, musing on the vast array of random chances in such a lazy universe that weren't so very random at all.

 **~x~**

The water was cooling now, but Molly Hooper found she cared little for that.

Candles would have been nice, but there had barely been time to lose clothing let alone set light to things. It wasn't entirely her fault, despite what Sherlock would undoubtedly remark upon later, since he knew exactly what he was doing when he drew _that_ bow across _that_ violin and played her _that_ particular piece.

An evocation of everything they had tried so hard to erase; a conjuring of burgeoning love and desire, a memory of the youthful hope and assurance that the world was golden, welcoming and designed entirely for you.

Beautiful, bow playing hands were no less talented with a sponge she noted, as water squeezed and cascaded over her shoulder, leaving her cherry tattoo glistening in the half light coming from the upturned lamp in the sitting room. She was sorry to have missed Amy, but terribly pleased she hadn't been at Baker Street when Sherlock had welcomed her up the stairs with her very own theme.

"That manuscript, Sherlock, has given you considerable power over me."

"Oh?" He squeezed more water over her back, but she knew he was smiling without even turning around.

"Oh yes indeed. You do feigned innocence so badly, I can sense it even in the dark. You can lift that bow whenever you may have a need - "

He kissed her shoulder, her neck, her other shoulder, pulling her close so that she felt the resonance, the deep rumble through her back as he spoke.

"I will _always_ have a need," he murmured, lips hovering above her carotid, hands circling her waist, pulling her into him.

"Good," she whispered softly, smiling into the shadows. "Good."

 **~fin~**

* * *

 **A/N: A heartfelt thank you to all of you lovely readers who took the time to read, comment and perhaps even favourite this story: I love you all. Your comments mean a great deal to me and allow me to be truly appreciative of this brilliant community we have.**

 **Lovely. :)**

 **E. x**


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